I had made myself small inside that family.

I had let them believe I was fragile.

And so their model of me, the model on which they built their crime, was of a delicate, dependent, isolated woman who would fall apart the moment her supports were removed.

What they had forgotten, because I had let them forget it, because I had spent years hiding it to keep their peace, was who I had been before I ever married into their precious family.

I had not always been the quiet, accommodating wife they had trained.