They assumed that intimidation and money would buy them silence.

They assumed that being a wife meant enduring cruelty quietly, protecting the family name at any cost, and accepting a smaller, quieter, secondary place in one’s own life.

It is the assumption every man like Arthur Vance runs his household on, and it works, tragically, most of the time.

It worked on Patricia for thirty-two years.

It would have gone on working, on both of us, for as long as we let it.

And the only reason it stopped working — the only reason there is a happy ending to tell — is that this time, the family’s fear-and-money machine happened to be pointed at a woman it did not know how to process: one who had her own money, her own skills, her own unshakeable knowledge of her own worth, and absolutely no interest in the place they had assigned her.