Late that night, in a quiet corner of the station waiting room, she said to me, softly, “I should have seen what he was doing so much sooner.” I took her hands.

“Seen what, Mom?” “What kind of man he really was,” she said, looking down.

And I shook my head, because I needed her to hear this, then and for the rest of her life.

“No, Mom.

Gavin didn’t show you what kind of man he was at the beginning.

That’s the whole trick of it.

First he spent months making absolutely sure you trusted him completely.

Only then did he start taking your independence away, one small piece at a time, so slowly and so reasonably that by the time it was bad, the bad had started to feel normal.