The difference between Stephanie and me, in the end, was not that one of us was worldly and one was not.

It was that I had figured out, barely in time, that the approval of people who do not love you is worth nothing at all, and she never figured it out until the morning it was taken from her all at once.

Chapter 17 — The Marriage Collapses

Steven’s marriage did not survive the disaster.

I had known, in some cold and clear-eyed part of me, that it probably would not, and I had made my peace with that before I ever picked up the phone at two in the morning.

It came apart within three months.