Sienna spent her whole life believing she was a loyal daughter, not a silenced witness.

Each of us, kept in a separate sealed room, was manageable.

Each of us, alone, could be dismissed, or paid off, or waited out.

What Arthur and the family never understood — what such men and such families never understand until it is far too late — is that the isolation is the only thing holding the whole structure up, and that it is astonishingly fragile, because it depends on the silenced never comparing notes.

The instant Sarah Pruitt’s name reached me, the instant Sienna found that folder, the instant one woman’s private, shameful, solitary story turned out to be the same story another woman was carrying alone across town, the spell broke, and it broke completely, because there is no version of “she’s imagining it” that survives three women describing the identical thing.