“That sentence followed me all the way to this bed.

When I saw you, I knew the way your whole body went rigid every time your husband touched you.

My Nell used to do exactly that.” I promised her I’d come back to visit.

She had carried it for ten years, she told me — the guilt of a woman who had seen and known and said nothing.

She had noticed the way Nell flinched at her own phone when it rang.

She had noticed the bruise-colored silences, the friends who fell away, the way her bright, argumentative daughter had gone quiet and careful and small.