But underneath it, steady as a heartbeat, a quieter voice had begun to speak, and it was the voice of my actual self, the self I had spent three years suppressing to keep the peace in that family.

It said: you know how to do this.

This is precisely what you know how to do.

Document everything.

Trace the truth.

Present the balance sheet. And I began, from that hospital bed, to listen to it again.

I want to say something about that voice, and about what it means to have suppressed it for three years, because I think a great many women will recognize the particular self-betrayal I am describing.

When I married into the Sterling family, I did not consciously decide to shrink.