I defended him.

For years, I defended him to you.”

I stayed quiet, because it was true, and because he needed to arrive at the rest of it himself.

Arthur Vance had never once raised his hand to his children; he had never needed to.

His cruelty had always come dressed in the respectable language of discipline and building character.

He believed children should be hardened, that tenderness spoiled them, that a crying child was a manipulative one, that to show weakness was a defect to be corrected.

Julian had grown up inside that, had been shaped by it, had spent his whole life mistaking a cold and controlling cruelty for tough love because it was the only kind of love he had been given and he had needed to believe it was love.