Rachel took a sharp step back, one hand flying to her mouth.

“I didn’t — I swear I didn’t know anything about that.”

“It was standard financial planning!” Marcus said, his voice climbing toward panic.

“That’s all it was, standard planning, I would never have — I wasn’t going to do anything to her!”

And I believed that much, actually, even then, and the forensic review would later confirm it: it had not been a plan to harm me.

My husband was a coward and a liar, but he was not a murderer, and the inquiry was not a scheme to hurt my body.