But in some lives, there comes a time when the monster comes out of the closet and won't go back in. That happened to me. He began to show himself. My grandmother was the first to see. Only the wisest people can observe a woman in such a relationship and not sit in judgment. Judgment is easy: it is black and white, as brutal as a gavel strike. It keeps a person from having to ask the hard questions: what can I do to help? Could that be me?

My grandmother didn't judge. She tried to understand—and if anyone could understand, it would be her, the woman who had raised me in her rose-covered cottage by Long Island Sound. A woman patient enough to coax red, pink, peach, yellow, and white roses from the stony Connecticut soil, to ease her brokenhearted orphan granddaughter back into life, could sit still long enough to see through the lies, see past the veils—and instead of judging, try to help, really help.

People said, “How could you have stayed with him so long?” The true answer, of course, is that I had the veils. But the answer I gave was “I loved him.” In its way, that answer was true too. My grandmother understood that.

It wasn't real love. I didn't know that for a long time. Real love is a boomerang—it comes back to you. With Edward, love was a sinkhole. It nearly consumed me, taking every single thing I had, and then some—until I, and everything surrounding me, collapsed.

I have Liam now, so I have learned the difference. And I have my daughter, Rose. The day Rose was born, nine years ago, I was on the run. I had left my home, my grandmother, my beloved Connecticut shoreline, where I had always lived, to escape Edward and try to save something of my life. The Connecticut motto is Qui Transtulit Sustinet—“He who transplants sustains.”

Leave it to the founding fathers to say “he.” Perhaps they knew that “she”—or at least “me”—“who transplants shatters.” I left home, pregnant with Rose, and I fell apart. But Rose coaxed the love right from my bones. I built myself back, with the help of Rose and Liam. And, although she wasn't right there in person, my grandmother. She was with me, in my heart, guiding me, every single day while I lived in hiding, in another country, far from home.

You see, my grandmother let me go. She made the ultimate sacrifice for me—gave me and Rose, her great-granddaughter, the chance and means to get away from Edward. She was a one-woman underground railway for one emotionally battered woman. And it cost her so dearly, I don't know whether she will survive.