“A good wife does not separate a man from his mother,” Gwendolyn declared, and slammed the phone down.

Marisol did not return the call.

She had heard the sentence, in one form or another, her entire married life, and she understood it, at last, for what it was: not a moral principle, but a lever — a way of redefining her most basic self-protection as a violation of her duty, so that defending herself would feel like an act of cruelty. A good wife does not. It was the whole machinery of her diminishment, packed into five words.

A good wife does not object.