Marisol stared at the glowing screen for a long moment.

Then she typed the only response that actually mattered. I know she didn’t.

You did.

She set the phone to silent and went to sleep.

And that single exchange, she would realize later, was the entire marriage in miniature.

Dorian’s instinct, even now, even at midnight, even after everything, was to route the accountability toward his mother’s ignorance and away from his own knowledge — to make the problem Gwendolyn’s innocent mistake rather than his own informed silence.

His mother had not known, and so, in his telling, no one had really done anything wrong; it was all just an unfortunate misunderstanding.