I knew I did not want to be cruel; cruelty was his native tongue, not mine, and to answer him in it would have been a kind of defeat, a way of letting him set the terms one last time.

And I knew I did not want to be frightened, or pleading, or hungry for his remorse, because wanting his remorse would have meant his opinion still had weight, and I had worked too hard to make it weigh nothing.

What I wanted, when the day came, was to be what I had become — calm, and clear, and unavailable to be moved by him — and to let that be the whole of my answer.

He had spent our marriage needing me to be smaller than I was.