“We are going to have a perfect life, Clara, as long as you trust me.” I understand, I said.

I am not proud of how good I had become at that face.

There is a particular shame in having to perform your own submission, in handing a man the quiet he has demanded while every cell in you is doing arithmetic, and I felt it keenly even as I did it.

But I had learned something in the cellar that I want to set down plainly, because it is the hinge of everything that came after.

Compliance can be a disguise.