“You know what’s really fucked-up?” she says. “I used to wish he would hit me.” I’d had this same thought about my father. His abuse was all emotional and psychological; the only marks it left were internal. Impossible to see, easy to deny. “Alexander could lie and cheat and turn my own mind against me, and everyone still thought he was so charming. But if I’d showed up to work with a black eye just once, everything would have changed. They would have had to take it seriously.”
