He had not imprisoned me with locks; he had imprisoned me with belonging.

He had offered a woman who had never had a home the appearance of one, and then made the appearance conditional on my compliance, my smallness, my gratitude.

Every kindness had been a bar in the cage.

The orchids, the remembered authors, the whispered promise never to let me be alone — all of it had been the construction of a beautiful enclosure designed to look, from the inside, like the one thing I had wanted my whole life, so that I would not notice it was a cage until the door locked.

And the cruelest part, the part I understood only as I said the words, was that he had counted on my history to keep me in it.

He had banked on the foster child’s terror of being put out, the deep certainty that this flawed belonging was the only belonging I would ever get and that I had better be grateful and quiet or lose it.