I closed my eyes.

The specialist had asked how long, and Mira couldn’t give dates.

She only knew it had happened many, many times, and that she had believed, all her life, that this was simply what happened to children.

Chapter 11 — Good Girls

The details Mira gave were quiet and terrible, and I will not lay them out one by one, because a child’s suffering is not a thing to be catalogued for effect.

What I will say is this: whenever Mira had felt dizzy or sick, her mother had told her that good girls trusted their mothers, and that family business stayed inside the family.