“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I was a coward,” Phoebe said, and to her small credit she offered not one excuse to soften it.

“My father controlled my trust fund, my house, my job — everything I had.

I knew that the day I opened my mouth, I would be put out on the street with nothing.

And so every year I told myself the same thing: that it was already too late, that the damage was done, that speaking now wouldn’t undo it.

I told myself that for four years.”