Now she was on her knees on my parents’ floor performing the biggest scene of her life, and for the first time it moved no one, because there was no longer anyone in the room willing to pay to make it stop.

The performance had always depended on an audience that would rather buy peace than watch her suffer.

That audience was gone.

What was left was just an old woman on the floor, and the truth she had spent five years screaming over: that she had never had any power at all except the power I gave her, and that I had taken it back.

My father looked at her without any warmth at all.

“Get up, Noreen.