Revenge, I have come to think, is a story people tell about women like me because it is more comfortable than the truth.

The truth is duller and harder and better.

I did not set out to ruin Flynn.

I set out to keep my children, and to keep myself alive, and the ruin of the man who had endangered both was simply what the law and my grandfather’s foresight did on their own once I stopped protecting him from the consequences of his own choice.

I was not the storm that took him down.