Where I had once seen the comfort of a trusted caregiver, Chloe’s words made me wonder if it was the sign of a woman insinuating herself where she did not belong.

Every one of those observations was true.

What had changed was not the facts but the frame Chloe had placed around them, and inside that frame, the same evidence that had once reassured me now alarmed me.

This is the terrible cleverness of the accusation Chloe made: it could not be disproven by anything I observed, because it reinterpreted everything I observed.

And so, poisoned by a suspicion I could not shake, I did the one thing that could resolve it.