It would be my word against his.

He would say I was hysterical, brain-damaged from the cold, delusional, unstable — the words, I would later learn, that he did in fact use.

A traumatized woman’s word against a wealthy, composed, grieving husband is a fragile thing, and Brandon was very good at seeming composed.

So I made myself do the hardest thing I have ever done on purpose.

I decided to let him believe he had won.

To let him walk back into town and tell his story and plan his funeral and reach for his fifty million dollars — while I, quietly, from a hospital bed, built the thing that would end him.