But it was not the whole truth, and the part it left out was the part that let me live afterward.

No one unlocked that door for me.

I found the key my captor had been too arrogant to look for, in a basket he had never thought to search, because it had never occurred to him that the woman in the cellar might be the kind who kept track of every key in the house.

I was not retrieved from that cellar.

I let myself out of it.