“What?” I could barely believe my ears. Bob's revelation stunned me; he was not only complicit in hiding Ella's secrets, but he had convinced our neighbors, too? Bob nodded. “Not all of them. Some of them had already decided to… well, to do nothing, I suppose. Some of them just wanted to mind their own business. Others, like Mary Taylor, had their own reasons, and if their spouses weren’t already of the same mind, they mo...

I didn’t get any work done that day, nor did I sleep well that night. The following day was better, but by Saturday evening, I realized that I’d had no visitors, and I began to worry. I’d expected someone to come and try to talk me out of exposing Ella’s secret and, in turn, the community’s role in keeping it. That didn’t happen. No one came to talk to me about this or anything else. I thought about reaching out to someon...