Because the terrible power an abuser has is the power of the unwitnessed act, and the moment an act is witnessed — truly witnessed, undeniably, by the very people whose blindness had protected him — that power breaks.

It was not only Julian I put on trial in that living room.

It was the whole comfortable silence of everyone who had watched him for five years and said nothing.

And when they set down their champagne and reached for their coats to leave, I understood that they were not only abandoning him.

They were, at last, and far too late, admitting what they had always known.

Chapter 13 — The Announcement