And sitting on that bench with the envelope in my hands, I understood that the two slaps had, in the strangest way, saved me — because a subtler man might have pulled it off, might have kept the frame clean enough that I’d have doubted her, and it was Brandon’s own violence, his inability to win without his fists, that had finally shown me, past all possibility of translation, exactly which of them I should have been believing all along.

Chapter 12 — The Real Target

When I told my mother, back at the hotel, the color left her face, and then she went very still, and then she said, “Sweetheart.

Did Brandon ever ask you about the money I got from selling your father’s land?”

My stomach dropped.

“What did he say to you, Mom?” She twisted her hands.

“He came to me a few times.

Said he knew about investment opportunities — ways to grow it for me.