Loving Your Child Is an Instinct; Shielding Him From the Consequences of What He Did to Another Human Being Is Something Else Entirely — I Learned the Difference at Sixty, at the Door of a Chicken Coop

“No,” she said.

“If I run from here out of fear, he’s still controlling me from a cell.

I want to stay, and make it into something beautiful.” So we did.

We took a bright room in the north wing, far from the master bedroom, and painted it sage green and hung white curtains and put wildflowers on the sill.

And then we dealt with the coop.

She did not want to burn it in a rush of feeling.