He did it so gradually that I never felt it go.

A raised eyebrow when I mentioned something that had bothered me.

A gentle, worried question about whether I’d been sleeping enough.

A patient sigh that suggested, without ever saying so, that I was a little too sensitive, a little too suspicious, a little too much.

Drop by drop, over years, until I had a reflex installed in me: the instant I noticed something wrong, a second voice — his voice, wearing my voice — would arrive to explain why I was mistaken to notice it.

By the end I was doing his work for him.