She had thought blaming me would buy her time.

“That makes it sound smaller than it was,” she wrote.

“You could have died because I let him think you had done something you hadn’t.

I heard you ask for your coat.

I stayed in the hallway.

I don’t have a good excuse.”

Her honesty was painful, particularly because it confirmed the detail I had replayed a thousand times: she had heard me.

She described attending treatment and learning ways to manage fear without lying to people.