This was a new skill she'd acquired, the ability to look, to the outside world, utterly serene and even cheerful, while, in her skull, all was chaos.

All these years, her sole objective had been to keep still and hope no one would ever know. She had been a mistress of stillness. She had mastered the simulation of peace without a wisp of real peace, like a nun from a silent order who was screaming inside her head, or a yogi racked with pain. How she had managed to fool anyone, let alone everyone, mystified her (how obtuse people were!) and, oddly, made her extraordinarily bitter. Because the price of her gift for evasion was to have no one, not one person, who understood how horrible she felt. All the time. Absolutely all the time.

In time the whole family perked up like Sesame Street puppets, hoping that cheer, if worked at hard enough, could sugar the living and quiet the dead.