Telling the truth had cost Phoebe her family.

It had also, it turned out, been the only thing that could give her a life.

I have thought about Phoebe more than the story strictly requires, because she is the character who most complicates the neat shape of it, and because her choice was, in some ways, the hardest one anyone in the whole affair had to make.

Mabel’s path, however brutal, was at least clear: she was innocent, she had been wronged, and every step she took toward the truth was a step toward her own vindication.

Phoebe had no such clarity.

Phoebe was guilty — not of the fraud, but of the silence, of four years of choosing her own comfort over an innocent woman’s ruin, and she knew it, and she said so, and offered no excuse.