“That’s the actual one,” Phoebe said. “You can just say that one.”

The visit happened in March, at the facility, with me present, with a therapist we had been seeing for two months present, and with conditions I had negotiated into the ground.

Gwendolyn is forty-six. She has gone gray and heavy and her hands were still. She has, I am told, been a model inmate, works in the education wing, has a certificate.

Phoebe asked her one question. She had prepared it and she had refused to show it to anyone, including the therapist.

She said: “In the basement, when I said I saw you go into the dressing room by yourself — did my dad believe me?”

I had not expected that. I do not think anyone had.