People kept asking, in the ways people do, why Mira had never told — why in years of it she’d never said a word to a teacher, a relative, a friend’s parent, anyone.

And the answer was not that she was too frightened, though she was frightened.

It was that she did not know there was anything to tell.

You cannot report a violation you don’t know is a violation.

You cannot ask for rescue from a life you believe is simply the life all children have.

Sondra hadn’t only harmed her daughter; she had stolen from her the very concept that she could be harmed — had raised her so completely inside the abuse that Mira had no vantage point from which to see it as wrong.