It takes her a moment to reply steadily.

“I am not obliged to cut myself open for your inspection,” she says, very carefully, “in order to learn from what I have lived. Just as I do not call you half a person for not exposing yourself to me. They are your wounds, and not mine; I do not need you to strip naked before me to respect that they are there, and to offer you the benefit of the doubt you have the presence of mind to learn from them. You are no less a thoughtful person for not sharing with me each of those thoughts.”

Quieter: “There is not a single day I do not think of my daughters. Of that life. But it is my life.”