It was the truth about that house, and the danger in it, and the reason a dying man had needed a wife he could trust with his life.

I set this down so plainly because I know how the sentence sounds, closed the door and said you can finally learn what you really signed for, and I know what a reader fears when she hears it, because I feared it too in the moment.

Stories like the one those words seem to promise are, sadly, real; women are hurt behind closed doors by men who hold power over them, and the fear I felt was the fear of every woman who has ever been alone with someone she could not be sure of.

I will not pretend that fear away or make light of it.