Not my mother, Ruth, who believed appearances were a moral virtue and silence was the same thing as dignity.
Not my father, Howard, who treated conflict like something to be pinned to the floor and handled in private, no matter who got hurt.
Me.
I was the one who smoothed things over. The one who let my mother interrupt me. The one who laughed off my sister’s comments because it was easier than challenging them. The one who had spent thirty-eight years training myself to step around the sharp furniture of my family so nobody bled.
That ended when they put their hands on my daughter.
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