Those levers had worked on me for thirty years.

They worked on Sabrina still.

They work on almost everyone, because almost everyone has something they are afraid to lose, and a person’s fears are the handles by which they are moved.

And what my father could not grasp, pounding on my door, was that every single one of those handles had been burned off me.

He could not threaten to exclude me from the family; I had already been abandoned by it.

He could not threaten my inheritance; I had already given away far more than he would ever have.