She wanted to be honest with herself about the temptation, though, because it was real.

Part of her wanted the trial. Part of her wanted to stand in a courtroom and watch the forged deed and the sold SUV and the whole cold, year-long scheme get read into a public record, wanted a judge to say out loud what Jason had done so that no smooth Sunday phone call could ever paper over it again.

She had earned that. She could almost taste it. But wanting it, she made herself see, was about her — about her vindication, her anger, her entirely reasonable hunger to see him named.

And a year of that would be a year of Owen sitting in waiting rooms and Zoe absorbing the tension in the house and both of them learning that their parents’ war mattered more than their childhoods.

Claire had spent eight months refusing to let her fear run the household. She was not now going to let her anger run it instead.

She chose the boring, airtight, unsatisfying settlement, and she counted choosing it as one of the harder and better things she had ever done.