She walked past me without waiting for a reply, her heels sharp on the slate, and the white van backed down the driveway, and the carriage house stood empty except for the bare floorboards and the smell of damp pine.

I understood what I was watching.

This is the final stage of the thing, the part that has a name in my profession and in others: isolation.

Cut the money, cut the work, cut the separate residence, move the person under your own roof and your own schedule, until there is no door left that she can close and call her own.

He thought he was tightening the last bolt.