She told us that Gavin routinely took her phone and read every message she sent and received.

That he controlled the money she was allowed to have on any given day, down to small change.

That he had changed the passwords on her own accounts without telling her, so that she could no longer see her own finances.

And she told us about a night two weeks earlier when he had slammed his fist on the dining table and shouted into her face that without him she was garbage, that she was nothing and had nothing, and that if she ever tried to leave he would personally see to it that she lost every last cent she thought was hers.

I listened to my mother recite these things in a flat, ashamed voice, and it was the flatness that undid me more than the content.