The mountain held both kinds of people that night.

And the second kind reached me first.

Chapter 6 — The Man I Thought I Married

In the days that followed, in a hospital bed, warm at last and safe at last, I had to do the hardest work of the whole ordeal, which was not physical.

It was the work of looking honestly, finally, at the marriage I had actually been in, as opposed to the one I had told myself I was in.

For years, I had believed Brandon was a protective man — a little controlling, maybe, a little quick to anger about money, but fundamentally the person who would stand between me and the world’s hardness.