There is not much for a jury to deliberate when the defendant’s own voice, recorded in his own car, describes his own crime in his own words.

The prosecution laid it out with a devastating simplicity: the dash-camera audio, the alpine rescue records that established exactly where and when I had been pulled from the cliff, the insurance documents that established the fifty-million-dollar motive, and Gretchen — who, having already confessed in a chapel full of witnesses, took the stand and confessed all over again, in full, sparing herself nothing in a desperate bid for leniency that the jury did not appear to find persuasive.

They returned a unanimous verdict of guilty in under two hours.

Brandon Prescott was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, at a maximum-security state facility.

Gretchen received a long sentence of her own.

And every asset Brandon had owned, or hoped to own, was seized by the court and placed into a secure trust — not for him, and not for me, but for Liam, so that the fortune my husband had been willing to commit murder for would pass, untouched by his hands forever, to the one person he had most wanted to erase.