The Locked Room at the Top of the Stairs

And some part of him, I could see now, had married me hoping I would be strong enough to cut the thing he had never been able to cut himself.

I have thought a great deal, since, about how a person is made the way Julian was made, because I loved him and I needed to understand him and because the understanding was the only way I could stop being angry at a man who had let me sleep on a couch on our wedding night.

Here is what I came to.

A child is born needing exactly one thing above all others, which is to be loved by the person who has him, and a mother like Victoria understands that need in her bones and learns to run her whole household on it.

She did not lock Julian in a room.

She did something far more durable.