They wanted a controlled one, and control is not built out of love; it is built out of fear, and isolation, and the steady erosion of a person until she no longer believes she can survive on her own.

The confiscated phone.

The severed friendships.

The messages sent to my parents in my name.

The job they intended to make me quit.

Each of these had seemed, at the time it happened, like a separate small thing I could explain away.

Lying on the kitchen floor, I saw them all at once for what they were: not separate at all, but a single patient project, each piece removing one more of the exits, one more of the ropes to the outside world, one more reason I might have to leave — until there would be nothing left but the house, and them, and a woman with nowhere else to go.

The broken leg was meant to be the last piece.