When the police came for her, Brigitte did not act surprised.

She only said, over and over, “You promised he would never come back.

You promised.”

I have tried, since, to feel something other than horror for my sister, and on my better days I can almost manage it.

Because I think I understand what happened to Brigitte, even if I can never forgive it.

She was a child in that cold house too, chasing the same withheld warmth I chased — and at some point, young, she had been let in on the secret, made a keeper of it, and had discovered that the secret was the price of our mother’s love.