And Veronica had been completely wrong, because she had misread the silence.

Carmen had not been silent because she was broken.

She had been silent because she was strategic, because she understood, with the deep wisdom of a woman who had survived eighty years of a hard world, that open resistance against a person who held all the power would accomplish nothing but her own further punishment, and that the truly powerful response was not to fight in the moment, when she could not win, but to record, patiently, and wait, for the moment when someone would arrive who could act on the record.

So every night, in that shed, on cots, humiliated, she had written it all down.