He told their friends, the board, and the doctors that the pregnancy had triggered severe chemical imbalances.

He painted her as emotional, fiercely paranoid, and fundamentally unstable.

He cast himself as the martyr—the devoted husband holding the pieces together.

But then came the night of the storm, three weeks before the coroner’s van arrived at their estate.

Emma had appeared at my kitchen door, soaked to the bone, water pooling around her bare feet on my linoleum floor.

Her eyes were wild, dark circles bruised beneath them.

“If something happens to me,” she had whispered, her hands trembling violently as she gripped my shoulders, “don’t cry first.