When Victoria asked him to describe Brandon’s expression in that moment, Justin gave the single most illuminating answer of the entire case.

“He looked,” Justin said, “like a man who thought he knew just what was going to happen, and then realized, all at once, that he had no control over any of it.”

That one sentence was the whole architecture of my marriage, laid bare.

Brandon controls the money, therefore Charlotte stays.

Brandon humiliates Charlotte, therefore Charlotte collapses.

Charlotte collapses, therefore Brandon is the long-suffering, reasonable husband managing an unstable wife.