She knew that the other children were grandchildren and she was something else.

She knew that when Gene’s voice went sweet, something unkind was coming, the way you know a smell means the milk has turned.

She had learned to go still and small in that house, to fold her hands, to make herself a quiet as-little-trouble-as-possible version of herself, and I had watched her do it and hated it, because the Holly who existed in her own home — loud, silly, bossy with her stuffed animals, fully and gloriously herself — went into hiding the moment we crossed Gene’s threshold, and a careful, watchful, diminished child came out in her place.

That is what Gene’s unspeakable insults actually cost.