The withdrawals I never questioned, the loans that were never repaid, the way affection in that family rose and fell in exact proportion to what I was spending — I had all of it, in statements I dutifully saved and never opened, because some part of me understood that to open them was to know, and to know was to have to act, and I was not ready to act, because acting meant admitting that the marriage I had poured myself into was a transaction I was losing.

So I did the thing I would have fired an analyst for doing.

I looked away from the numbers because I did not like where they pointed.

I told myself the story I wanted — that I was generous, that they were warming to me, that one more lavish gesture would finally buy my way into their hearts — and I filed the contradicting evidence in a drawer and did not read it.

The planning of that trip was the last and largest entry in five years of willful blindness.