The phrases sounded pleasant enough on the surface that if you objected to them, you were the one who looked unhinged, the oversensitive stepmother reading cruelty into innocent turns of phrase.

Beatrice could exclude my daughter systematically, week after week, holiday after holiday, and still play the wounded innocent if anyone dared to name what she was doing.

She had built herself a perfect machine for hurting a child while remaining, on paper, entirely blameless.

And for three years, it had worked.

For three years, I had watched my little girl absorb a thousand tiny cuts, the kind that never leave a mark anyone else can see, and had never found the moment, or the words, to make it stop.

And I have had to be honest with myself, in the time since, about why I never found them.