Not cruelty.

Indifference.

It is possible to survive being hated; hatred is a form of attention, and attention can be anticipated, and countered, and used.

What is far more dangerous, to the person doing it, is indifference — the failure to consider someone worth thinking about at all.

Wendy did not lie awake worrying about what her stepdaughter might discover, because it never occurred to her that her stepdaughter was capable of discovering anything.

She did not vet me, or manage me, or watch me, because in her mind there was nothing to watch.