That was all it took.

I will spare the details, as I said.

What I remember, and what matters, is what came after, in the seconds when I lay on the Persian rug and my husband stood over me.

Because I looked up at him, wounded, believing myself to be dying, and I waited for the horror to arrive in his face, for him to drop the knife and fall to his knees and understand what he had done to the woman he had married.

It never came.