And Everard — the one who had said, at the table, you’re talking as though she has no feelings — moved into a modest apartment near the coast, and some weeks later he sent Isadora a letter, handwritten.

In it he admitted that he had seen, for years, how his wife and his children treated her, and had said nothing, because he disliked conflict and had told himself it was not his business.

Isadora read the letter twice before she answered it.

She did not offer him easy forgiveness.

She offered him something more useful, which was the truth.

“Silence may feel harmless to the person choosing it,” she wrote back.