He had been managing the optics.

His entire objection to his mother hurting his daughter was that she might do it where people could see.

And suddenly every single time he had asked me to keep the peace meant something new and terrible.

He had never been asking me to keep the peace.

He had been asking me to help him keep the secret.

For two years, I had thought I was married to a weak man who could not stand up to his mother.

I understood now that I was married to a man who had chosen his mother’s cruelty and only wished it kept quiet — and that the difference between those two men was the difference between a coward and an accomplice.