But it is inescapable, you are not alone now.

Trapped in your (second-floor) room. In the house with the person who wants badly to defeat you, to defile you, and if defiled you will have to be murdered for he cannot risk your telling on him; it is the fatal move of the victim, the telling.

Though perhaps he is thinking—She didn’t tell on the other. The pervert.

You remain very still. You do not pray but you instruct yourself to remain very still, scarcely dare breathe, perhaps the man will come to his senses, as it’s said; will relent, will think twice, step away from the door without grabbing the handle and shoving the door open.

Instead after several minutes of silence tense as a wire strung tight to bursting he will decide to pass by with just a thump on the door, flat of his hand, a gesture that might be interpreted as jocular, mock-fatherly—Hey there, Vi’let! Just me.

BUT EVENTUALLY IRMA LEARNS. DESPITE THE HUSBAND’S STRATAGEMS, and the niece’s determination not to tell, she learns. Of course she is deeply shaken, stunned.

Her marriage! Her precious marriage!

Her husband Oscar Allyn of whom she’d been so proud, that he was her husband. That she’d acquired, at almost-thirty, a husband. For Irma had passed her girlhood in a trance of dread at being left behind—never engaged, never married. The plainest of sisters, yet not the smartest. The good girl—born to be a virgin through her (long) life. Her fate would be that of those daughters common in large Irish families, aunties, spinsters whom others take for granted, condescend to, pity.

She cannot bear it at her age, beyond fifty. Losing the husband. The man.

And yet, the shame of the man’s behavior with her sister’s daughter, under her very roof—the girl she has hoped to protect and cherish! She prays to the Virgin Mary for solace, advice: What should she do?

Possibly, Irma speaks to the priest at confession. You don’t know who this might be, for you’d never gone to confession at Irma’s church.

It isn’t clear what precipitates the crisis. Possibly Aunt Irma, meek-mannered, fearful of raising her voice, stricken with embarrassment at a ribald joke on TV, nonetheless dares to confront the (drunken) husband on one of the evenings he returns home late.

And possibly, the husband refuses to answer her, or in an outburst of fury has loudly denied “touching”—“threatening”—her niece in such a way that she understands that—of course— he is guilty.

Of course Irma has known. Slow to realize but it’s inevitable. The strain between her husband and the girl, tense silences at mealtimes, hostile glances. The husband’s flushed face and glaring eyes, the girl’s sullen manner. Why, the husband and the girl are not speaking to each other!—she finally understands.