Gavin did not order me to quit.

That is the sentence he would use later — I never forced you — and it was true in the way a lie is often built out of true things.

What he did was better than force.

He made staying feel like selfishness.

He talked, warmly, about not wanting a stranger raising our daughter, about how his own mother had been home for him, about how lucky Mia would be, about how much he admired women who put family first.

He built a picture of the good mother, and hung it on the wall, and made sure the good mother in the picture did not have a job.