And a person who feels safe, it turns out, will eventually, on a rainy morning, in her own time, open a door she has kept locked her whole life.

Chapter 5 — Feet, Then Hair

Trust, with a person like Edith, does not arrive.

It accrues, slowly, in tiny deposits, and it can be wiped out in a single wrong move.

Two weeks after the morning of Oslo, she let me wash her feet.

That was all — just her feet, in a basin, while she sat in her chair and pretended to be absorbed in the crossword and I pretended not to understand what an enormous thing was happening.

A few days after that, she let me wash her hair, tipping her head back over the sink with her eyes shut, rigid at first and then, gradually, less so.