I was done with all of it, the whole story, and burning that last page was how I closed the book.

Then I stepped out onto the porch, and the evening sun came across the uneven skin along my shoulder, warm and unhidden, and I stood in it.

I thought about the woman who had stood in that ballroom eight months earlier, covering herself on her mother’s command, and about the woman standing on this porch in a sleeveless dress with the sea in front of her, and I understood that the distance between them was the whole point of everything that had happened.

My family had spent twelve years telling a beautiful story about themselves, and the entire beautiful story rested, secretly, on one thing: my willingness to keep my robe on, my scars hidden, my mouth shut.