But Mother said they wouldn't believe me. She said men like Father were good at hiding what they were, that he had friends in the magistrate's office who would make sure any testimony I gave was dismissed, and that the only way to save me was for her to take the responsibility."
Her eyes met Maureen's across the table.
"So I ran," Elisabeth said.
"I ran because my mother told me to and because staying would have meant dying, and I spent the next year living on the streets and learning to steal and learning to fight and learning that the world was considerably more terrible than I'd understood it to be. By the time I heard Mother had been executed, I was already gone—too far away to come back, too changed to be the person I'd been, too focused on survival to do anything except keep moving forward."
Maureen's face was wet with tears; she didn't seem aware she was crying, her hands gripping the table edge with enough force that her knuckles showed white.
