I slept in a thick nightgown, summer and winter both.

If he reached for me in the night, if he tried to hold me from behind, I would take his hands, gently, and pull them around to my stomach, and he thought it was sweetness, and it was fear.” I sat down slowly in the chair across from her.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why would you hide it from him for forty years?

He loved you.” “Because,” she said, and she was quiet for a moment, choosing the words.