“This was the bad version. This version was what later events told her had happened. It was as real as the other. They played simultaneously in a loop, yet Mathilde could never quite believe it. That twitch of a leg, a later insertion, surely. She could not believe, and yet something in her did believe, and this contradiction that she held within her became the source of everything. All that remained were the facts. Before it all happened she had been so beloved, afterward, love had been withdrawn. And she had pushed or she hadn't, the result had been all the same. There had been no forgiveness for her, but she had been so very young. How could parents do this? How could she not have been forgiven?”