What he did to us, he did with planning and control, on his own schedule, for his own reasons, and I will leave it there, because the mechanics of a cruel man’s cruelty do not deserve a detailed retelling.

What matters is the architecture he built around it — the prison without bars.

He confiscated our phones.

He put locks on the inside of doors.

And, most effectively of all, he spent three years quietly telling everyone who might have helped us a different story: telling neighbors and teachers and school counselors that Nora and I were troubled, manipulative, attention-seeking girls who could not be believed.

He built our disbelief in advance, so that if we ever did speak, the ground would already have been prepared to swallow our words.