He did not stop.

What he did to my wife was a violent assault, and the court record holds the full and terrible particulars of it, and that is exactly where I have left them; I will not repay her courage by printing her worst hour for strangers to read.

She was named a victim of a crime.

She was never made a spectacle.

I saw to that.

And then my mother came in.

She saw the broken door and the state of that room and my daughter crying in the corner, and she understood, completely and instantly, what her youngest son had just done.

Odile begged her — begged her — to call for help.

And my mother made a choice.

She took the backup phone out of Odile’s hands and shut it off.