I was her accusation the way I was our mother’s.

In that family, my innocence was the unforgivable thing.

I understand it now.

I will never stop being grateful that whatever they did to make Brigitte, they did not get the chance to do to me — because I was the outside daughter, the cold-shouldered one, and the exile that wounded me my whole childhood turns out to have been the thing that kept my hands clean.

Chapter 18 — The Hospital Room

My mother regained consciousness three days after her stroke, in a guarded hospital room, to find a detective and her surviving-in-every-sense husband’s daughter waiting.