“Three of us in a one-bedroom.

Idelle found work, but it barely covers the basics.

And I kept quiet, because I was ashamed to let people know what my daughter had lived through.” She did not raise her voice through any of it.

She simply told the truth, in a plain steady tone, and let it land where it fell.

The shame was the part Corwin would think about most, later.

Not Espe’s shame — she had nothing to be ashamed of — but the fact that she had carried it anyway, that a woman whose only crime was loving her family through a catastrophe had spent six months hiding that family’s need as if it were a disgrace.