Each photograph she took was a small act of war against people who had spent years convincing her she was powerless, and I watched the change accumulate in her week by week — her spine a little straighter, her hands a little steadier on the phone.

She was not gathering evidence only for me.

She was taking back, one image at a time, the person they had spent years trying to erase.

There was a psychology to it that I only fully understood as I watched it happen.

For years the Pembrooks had maintained their control over Yvaine not just through the leash of her father’s care but through a steady, grinding campaign to convince her she was helpless — that she could do nothing, that she was nothing, that the world outside would never believe her and there was no point in trying.

Learned helplessness, a therapist would later call it: the state a person falls into when they’ve been taught, over and over, that their actions change nothing, until they stop acting at all.