*If I talk, she makes me hold a spoonful of salt on my tongue until it burns.*

*I hate her.*

*I hate her so much.*

The words *I hate her* were written over and over, pressed so hard into the paper that the pen had torn through to the next page.

I flipped through the pages, my eyes scanning the childish script.

It was a catalog of misery.

Eleanor had not been the sweet, confused old woman she was now.

She had been a monster to him.

She had locked him in closets, denied him food, and forced him to perform bizarre rituals of cleanliness.

I opened the second journal.

The handwriting here was older, more refined, the script of a teenager.

*She is getting worse,* Nathan had written when he was fifteen.

*She forgets things, but she never forgets how to hurt me.*

*Today she threw my biology textbook into the fire.*

*She said science was a sin.*

*I will become a doctor just to prove she is wrong.*

*I will dissect things.*

*I will cut the sickness out of this family.*