Three days after my twin sons were born, my husband brought twenty-two members of his family into a hospital room and offered me two hundred thousand dollars to sign away my marriage, my children, and my right to ever ask about their company's accounts. They expected me to cry. I read every page and signed all of them.

Six months of deliberate silence turned out to be a skill I already had, and I had built it in that marriage without noticing, and I have needed to be honest about that in a room with a professional since.

The physical part was worse than the deceit. I carried twins to thirty-five weeks in a state of permanent low-grade readiness, with a go-bag in the boot of a car that was in my own name — the one thing I had quietly moved in the August — and a copy of everything in a safe deposit box at a credit union eleven miles away.

I had a blood pressure problem from about week thirty. It was managed and it was fine. I have never once been told it was connected to anything and I have never once fully believed that.

The complaint to the state licensing board was drafted in the September and sat in Beatrix Nwankwo's drawer, finished, unfiled, for eleven weeks.