I had believed, the way you are taught to believe, that if I could just be better, calmer, more accommodating, the good version of Garrett would come back, because I thought the cruelty was the aberration and the kindness was the truth.

Lying on that floor listening to him narrate the plan in a calm voice, I finally understood I had it exactly backwards.

The kindness had been the aberration — or not even that; the kindness had been the tool.

The warmth at the beginning, the charm, the vows: those had been the bait that got me into the house, and the cruelty was not a malfunction of the machine but the machine working as designed.

What Garrett and his mother wanted was not a happy wife.