Mine had been scratched out.

Not torn — scratched, over and over, with something sharp, until the paper had worn through and there was nothing left of me but a rough pale hole where my face had been.

I stood holding it, and above me the house was silent, and below me my husband lay in our bed pretending to sleep, and I understood, at last and completely, that I was in real danger, and that I had been in it since the moment I said yes.

Chapter 9 — What Julian Hid

I took the diary down the stairs and I put it on the kitchen table in front of Julian in the gray of the next morning, open to the page about his father, and I said, “I need you to tell me the truth now.

All of it.”