I had heard Sondra say that second phrase across a dozen Sunday dinners — family business stays in the family — and had taken it for a tired saying.

It had been an instruction.

Mira had woken up more times than she could count on a sofa or in the back of a car with no memory of how she got there, and she had thought every child lived this way, because no one had ever told her otherwise, because the one person who was supposed to keep her safe was the one teaching her to be silent.

But the phrase that stayed with me longest was the first one — good girls trust their mothers — because of the specific damage it was designed to do.

When Mira’s own body told her something was wrong, when she felt the dizziness and the sickness and the strange sinking into sleep, her mother’s answer was to teach her not to trust the message.

To override her own senses.