If you cooperate, maybe we can settle this divorce without things getting ugly.

I read it, and I smiled, and it was not a warm smile.

He had already written the whole story in his head — I could see every line of it.

In his version, I was the grasping, bitter daughter-in-law who had swooped in on his mother’s deathbed to steal an inheritance while he was away on urgent business.

He had cast me as the villain and himself as the wronged and grieving son, and he was summoning the family court of his aunts and uncles to convict me.

He genuinely believed it would work, because it always had; the family had always believed his version, and I had always sat silent and taken it.