Olivia stopped hiding food in her pockets — I found the little hoarded crusts and wrappers in her coat one afternoon and cried in the laundry room, and then a week later there were no more of them, because she had finally started to believe there would be dinner tomorrow.

Erica began to sing again. She’d been a singer, my middle girl, before that house taught her to be quiet, and one morning I heard her humming in the hall and had to hold onto the banister. And Holly found the piano.

Bruce had a grand piano in the front room that I don’t think he ever played. Holly, four years old, climbed onto the bench one day and pressed the keys one at a time, delighted, and instead of moving her off it, Bruce sat down beside her.

He showed her where middle C was. He came home early to do it. Hour after hour, this billionaire who the papers called cold sat next to my youngest daughter and taught her, with enormous patience, to find little melodies with one finger.

We were married, legally and completely. And we slept in separate rooms, and he knocked before he entered any space I was in, and he asked me before he made a single decision that touched the girls.

He never once made me feel that his protection came with a price.