Kieran dismissed my objections; I felt I had no standing to object.

The family treated my money and my patience and my dignity as a common resource; I felt I had no right to withdraw them.

And none of it was true.

The power to stop had been in my hands the entire time, sitting in a banking portal precisely where it had always sat, requiring nothing but a decision I could have made on any of two thousand ordinary mornings.

I had simply never made it, because I had confused my own reluctance to cause a scene with an actual inability to act, and had called my compliance powerlessness when it was really only fear wearing powerlessness as a disguise.