This was a man being deliberately held prisoner in his own body, kept helpless on purpose, week after week.

And the person who stood to gain everything when he finally died came into that room every single day, without fail, to ask, one way or another, how much time was left.

I sat there in the dark of my little room with my sleeping baby beside me and let the full shape of it settle over me, and I understood that I was no longer a caregiver who had stumbled onto an unpleasant family.

I was the only person in that house who knew that a murder was underway, slowly, patiently, in plain sight, dressed up as a natural death.