For years, my stepfather kept my twin sister and me living in constant fear, as though our suffering was the only thing that satisfied him. One night, after beating us until we both lost consciousness, he carried us into the emergency room while my mother quietly told the doctors, “They just fell down the stairs.”

“Do you still dream about him?”

“Sometimes.”

“What do you do when you wake up?”

I looked back through the hospital doors before answering.

“I remind myself of something.”

“What?”

“Silence doesn’t belong to him anymore.”

For most of our childhood, silence meant waiting for footsteps outside our bedroom door and wondering whether we would survive another night. Now it meant something completely different.

It meant safety.

It meant freedom.

And, for the first time in our lives, it meant peace.