And each further turn of the key is offered the same way, as another kindness: let me handle the money, so you don’t have to worry; let me make the big decisions, so you can rest; let me manage the accounts, the schedule, the house, the plans, so that all you have to do is be happy.

Every single bar of the cage is installed as a gift, and you thank him for each one as it goes in, because from the inside each one really does feel like being cared for, and it is only much later, when you at last reach for the door and discover you can no longer find it, that you understand what all that generous care was actually building.

I do not blame the woman I was for thanking him.

She was doing exactly what she had been so carefully taught to do.

But I have made her a promise, that younger, grateful, caged woman: that I will never again mistake the disappearance of my own power for a kindness done to me, no matter how warmly it is offered, no matter how good the suit it wears.

Chapter 3 — Eleanor and Sienna