He had reached past me and used my parents’ love as collateral.

He had gambled the one thing in my life that had been given freely, and he had done it in the dark, and he had counted on my never being the kind of person who could read the paperwork.

He had married a woman who read paperwork for a living.

It remains, to this day, the most baffling miscalculation I have ever seen a supposedly clever man make.

Chapter 9 — Everett