Inmaculada had said nothing, but inwardly she had thought: there it is.

That is the whole of what we are trying to give her back.

Not comfort.

Not an explanation.

The authorship of her own life.

Chapter 24 — The Infirmary

The infirmary needed a new keeper, and it needed, Inmaculada felt, a new name — a way of marking that it was not the same room where Soledad had measured out fear in small doses.

The sisters cleaned it from floor to rafters, and threw open the shutters that had always been kept half-closed, and let the light pour into it as it never had.