I lost my Raymond and could never prove my fear.

But I will not let my daughter pay the price for my silence. Naomi had known.

She had tried, from beyond her own grave, to protect the daughter she’d had no safe way to protect in life.

Chapter 18 — The Mother’s Apology

There was a reckoning inside our own house too, and it mattered as much to me as anything the law did.

My mother came into the bedroom one evening carrying a cup of tea, and set it down without a word, and then stood in front of Vivienne with her back very straight, the way a person stands who has decided to say a hard thing and not flinch from it.