And I heard about it, through the mutual acquaintances such news travels through, and I found, examining my own heart carefully, that I did not particularly mind the accusation.

Because in a sense, she was right.

I had.

I had taken the thing they called a family — the dinners, the house, the holidays, the whole gleaming structure of it — and I had brought it down, deliberately, with my own hands and my own signature.

I did not dispute that I had destroyed it.

I only understood, by then, something Patricia never would: that the thing I had destroyed had not actually been a family at all.

And there was, I found, a strange freedom even in accepting the blame she assigned me.