And then we would let the law do what my hands wanted to.

I have thought since about why that was the right choice, the choice to go legal rather than to confront in rage, because everything in me wanted the other thing, and I think the reasons matter beyond my own case.

The first reason was strategic, and my sister named it: my mother’s entire power lay in her ability to control a narrative, to spin any confrontation into drama, to make herself the wronged party, to turn a room’s attention away from what she had done and toward how she had been treated.

A screaming confrontation was the field on which she was undefeated; she had been winning those my entire life.