Because Vance, and my sister, and my parents, had all built their entire scheme on a single assumption about me: that I was passive.

That I could be counted on to absorb, to comply, to pay, to not look.

Every move they made depended on my being the woman they had always decided I was.

And that meant that the moment I stopped being her — invisibly, without announcing it — I could move through their whole operation like a ghost, because they were not watching me.

Why would they watch the appliance?

You do not keep an eye on the furniture.