I will only say that it was the mark of something enormous, something that had happened to her body a very long time ago, and that my first thought — before I could stop it, before I understood anything — came out of my mouth as a whisper.

“My God.

Who did this to you?” For a moment she didn’t answer.

She stood facing the wall, her arms wrapped across her own chest, shielding a front that needed no shielding, out of a habit forty years deep.

Then she turned her head, slowly, and looked at me over her shoulder with those pale, faded, clear eyes.

“Nobody did this to me,” she said.

And something in her voice had changed — some weight had come into it, some old and buried dignity.