“They arrested them,” I told her.

She nodded slowly, as though she’d known from the start.

“Then you can finally go home.”

She told me about her daughter, Nell, who had died ten years ago in a crash that a controlling husband had arranged — who had called her mother minutes before, saying her car wasn’t working right.

Winifred had suspected for months that the man was isolating and hurting her, and had said nothing, because it hadn’t felt like her place.

“I kept telling myself it wasn’t my business,” she said, the tears running the lines of her face.