We had praised all of it.

We had held Mira up as the example, the good one, the easy one, and told our own louder children to be more like their cousin.

And none of us — not one adult in that entire family, across years of Sunday dinners — had ever once asked why a small child grew so reliably, so conveniently drowsy exactly when her mother wanted quiet.

The signs had been in front of all of us the whole time, dressed up as a virtue, and we had admired them.

I would carry that for a long time: that Sondra had hidden it in plain sight, and that she’d been able to, because the thing she was doing looked, to a family that prized well-behaved children, like good parenting.

Chapter 10 — The Interview