She was not the architect of what Jonathan did; the evidence never put the ledger or the forgeries in her hand.

But she had built, over a lifetime, the house of silence he operated inside, the family creed that difficulties are kept behind closed doors and that a woman’s first duty is to a man’s peace of mind, and that creed had made her, at the very least, a woman who would sell a daughter-in-law two hundred and eighty thousand dollars of silence in a church corridor without a flicker.

People like Rosalind rarely commit the crime.

They do something quieter and, in its way, more lasting: they build the room the crime needs, furnish it with manners, and teach everyone inside it that the worst thing a person can do is not cruelty but the public mention of cruelty.