Who had braided her hair before school.

Who had sat by her bed through childhood fevers.

Whom Vivienne had called Auntie with all the trust a child gives the family that raises them.

That was the wound that went deepest, deeper than the ropes or the cold — that the hands that had done all of that gentle raising were the same hands that had ordered her bound in a cellar.

And then the past closed the circle: an old friend of Naomi’s came forward with a sealed letter Naomi had written days before her death and entrusted to her, and in it Naomi had written, If anything terrible ever happens to my sweet Vivienne, look first to my sister Delilah.