“How did that make you feel?”

“Objection,” Ellis said.

“You can answer,” Kesler said pleasantly.

And here is where I had a choice, and I have thought about it every week since.

The useful answer — the one that helped us — was *I knew it was a performance, I understood immediately, it didn’t affect me.* It was even partly true. I did know. I’d been watching people say things they didn’t mean for five months by then; I was better at it than anyone in that house.

But I had spent fourteen months walking women through insurance calls, and the single thing I said to them most often, so often that Sonya teased me for it, was: *don’t manage it for them. Say the true thing. Make them hold it.*