What I faked was the meaning of the tears.

Nathan saw a woman breaking.

I was a woman deciding.

And there is a loneliness in that performance deeper than almost anything else I have known — to sit across from the person who is supposed to love you, and let him believe he has finally won, and receive his tenderness as a reward for your own destruction, all while the truest part of you sits perfectly still behind your eyes, taking notes.

When he smoothed my hair and said good girl, I had to hold two things at once: the genuine devastation of hearing it, and the cold professional satisfaction of knowing that his contempt was making him careless.