It was the whole architecture of my family, compressed into a phrase.

It meant: don’t embarrass Jessica.

It meant: don’t talk about the hospital.

It meant: don’t mention the fire.

And beneath all of those, at the very bottom, it meant the one thing my family had built its entire perfect image on top of: never, ever tell anyone how you really got the scars covering your back, and your ribs, and your shoulder, and your left thigh.

For twelve years, that sentence had worked.