And meanwhile, quietly, something far more important surfaced: a neighbor of the Millers, disturbed by the shouting on my wedding night, had recorded audio through the wall — audio in which Jonathan can be heard admitting he had struck me, with Florence’s voice in the background, encouraging him.

I took all of it to my lawyer.

The medical record documenting my split lip.

The neighbor’s recording.

The eyewitnesses to Florence’s public tirades.

And I filed, calmly and completely, a criminal complaint for domestic battery against Jonathan and a civil suit for defamation against Florence.

I want to be clear that I took no pleasure in the filings themselves; they were not revenge, they were bookkeeping — the careful entering, into the official record, of things that had actually happened, so that they could no longer be denied by two people whose entire strategy was denial.

Chapter 10 — The Restaurant