The larger half was the story they built around the cruelty — the file, the log, the careful accumulation of a portrait.

Because a person who intends to keep hurting someone, and to get away with it, faces one real danger, and it is not being cruel; it is being believed about.

And so the truly dangerous abuser does not only hurt the victim.

He prepares the world, in advance, to disbelieve her.

He tells the neighbors she’s unstable before she can tell them anything at all.

He builds a paper trail of her supposed lies before she has told a single truth.