I had known.

I had known on the floor.

What I felt was closer to a terrible relief — the relief of a person who has been carrying an unbearable truth entirely alone and is finally handed proof that she is not mad, that it happened, that the calm voice on the phone had been real and she had heard it right.

Because that is the quiet second cruelty of a man like Christopher, underneath the first: he does not only try to harm you, he arranges things so that if you survive to say so, you will sound insane.

He builds it so that your truth will be indistinguishable from a breakdown.