Sabine laughed too.

That was the part that went into me deepest — not the words, but the laughter.

My sister, laughing.

I want to be honest that hearing it did not feel like the movies.

There was no swell of music, no clean rush of righteous anger.

There was just a cold, dropping sensation, floor after floor, as the last few things I had still believed about my life — that my husband had loved me even a little, that my sister was still my sister underneath whatever had gone wrong — fell away and left nothing standing but the facts.

He had wired my belt himself.