Words had been her instrument and her weapon and her shield for as long as she had lived.

And in the one moment when saying nothing would have served her, when silence was the only thing that might have preserved a defense, she could not manage it.

The reflex to talk, to control, to insert herself and shape the narrative, was too deep in her to override, and it betrayed her at the exact instant it mattered most.

She was undone not by my cleverness or Teresa’s courage, in the end, but by the very quality that had carried her that far.