Victoria came downstairs at dusk and found Elena alone in the living room.

Marcus had gone into the study an hour earlier and closed the door—not locked, just closed, the first small concession to the cracks that had appeared in his ability to manage the reckoning. Elena sat on the edge of the couch with her hands in her lap and the thick residual heat of the morning’s load still warm between her legs. The lower marks under her sweater ached in a dull continuous line. She had not washed it away. The complete submission still sat in her body like a second pulse, and the knowledge that her mother...