Page 144 of The Professor's Wife

But what terrified me most wasn’t the prison of iron or the ache in my stomach.

It was that the words weren’t just in the book anymore.

They were inside me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

THE PAST

He didn’t let me go.

Instead, he gave me more old texts, refilled my glass of water, and fed me irregular plates of plain food—rice, beans, bread—before leaving me alone again.

To fight against the dying light.

To piss in my sheets.

To surrender to the words being forced down my fucking throat.

I lost all sense of time.

Had it been days?

Weeks?

Where was my son?

What was Oliver doing beyond that room?

The lamps died and were replaced. Sometimes he brought more, but save for one, they were always out of reach. They became a countdown to the next examination.

The glass of water returned, then disappeared again.

My stomach gnawed at itself until the hunger stopped feeling sharp and became something dull and constant.

And all the while, the books remained beside me.

Always there.

Their pages became stained by my trembling hands, smudged with sweat and tears.

At first, I read with fury, skimming the words so I could say I had. I told myself I wouldn’t let them sink in. That it was all part of Oliver’s sick manipulation.

But something happens when you read the same words over and over in the dark, half-delirious, with no sound but your own voice.

They sink.

The books kept telling me that pain was made worse by the mind. That suffering came from resisting what couldn’t be changed. That peace depended on controlling my thoughts, no matter what was happening to my body.

I knew why Oliver had chosen those words.

If I suffered, it was because I had failed to master myself. If I was afraid, the fear was another weakness.

Even chained to the floor, I was supposed to believe the real prison existed inside my own mind.

“What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”

The sentence burrowed under my skin.