And in a house built entirely to isolate and terrify, the simple fact of not being alone was the thread we held onto, all the way through, until it led us out.

I have wondered, sometimes, whether we would have survived if there had been only one of us, and I do not like the answer, because I do not think either of us would have.

The whole design of Roland’s cruelty was isolation — the confiscated phones, the severed uncle, the poisoned reputations, the locked doors.

He understood, the way abusers understand, that a person alone can be convinced of almost anything, including that she deserves what is being done to her, including that no one will ever help, including that the abuser’s version of reality is the only one that exists.

Isolation is not incidental to abuse; it is the mechanism by which abuse rewrites a person’s mind, because a mind with no other minds to check it against will eventually accept whatever it is told often enough.