Three hours later, as I was checking into a quiet residence in Charleston, my phone lit with a message from Priya. Roderick just reached the island house.

The hospital told him you’d checked out early.

The trap is sprung.

I read it twice, sitting on the edge of a strange bed with my sleeping daughter beside me, and I felt no triumph in it.

Only the cold, level calm of a woman who had spent nine months preparing for a day she’d prayed would never come, and had come anyway.

The red cross on the portrait is the part of this story that people most enjoy, when I tell it — the small, vivid, satisfying image of the wronged wife defacing the wedding picture on her way out the door.