And once you can see the bars, you can find the door.

He thought he had locked me out.

He had, in fact, shown me the way out — had flung open, with his own careless cruelty, the one door that mattered, the door out of a beautiful cage and into an actual life.

I walked through it, carrying my daughter, and I did not look back.

Three months later, in a small bright townhouse that held no chandeliers and no cage and no one who would ever lock my child out of anything, I understood that for the first time in longer than I could remember, I was finally, and unmistakably free.

I have wondered, since, whether I would ever have left on my own — whether, if Ethan had not changed that passcode, I would have gone on for years inside that beautiful cage, decorating nurseries and being tolerated at dinners and slowly, without noticing, disappearing.