That last part is the one that still catches in my throat.

It was not merely fear that had kept my daughter silent, though there was plenty of that.

It was love.

Brenda had been clever enough, and cruel enough, to weaponize the very thing that was best in Hannah, her fierce protective love for me, and to turn it into the instrument of her own silence.

My daughter had been told, over and over, that speaking up would ruin my happiness and leave me lonely and broken, and so she had swallowed her own suffering, week after week, in what she believed was an act of love toward her father.

She was protecting me.