I have thought a great deal since about how the mind performs that particular forgery, because it terrifies me a little, how completely and how invisibly it works.

I did not consciously decide to remember that night falsely.

If you had asked me, at any point in those six months, what had happened at the end of my marriage, I would have told you, with total sincerity and not a flicker of doubt, that Rosalie had grown unhappy and had left me, and that I had handled it with dignity.

I believed it.