In the weeks that followed, Amparo grew steadier — not back into the person she had been, but into someone new, and in some ways stronger.

She had spent years, she realized, being managed — her sleep, her care, her hours quietly arranged by other hands, first out of ordinary convent routine and then, monstrously, by a man in the walls and a sister with a cloth.

Now she began, deliberately, to reclaim the small sovereignty of her own life.

She chose who came into her room.

She chose who sat with her when the doctor came.