I had carried that fear into the marriage from the first day, the low animal certainty that a man like me was loved for what he had and would be robbed the moment he looked away.

Maya only had to hold up a picture and let my own suspicion draw the rest.

The forged invoices were hers.

The photographs were hers.

But the readiness to believe them, the eagerness, the relief of finally having the betrayal I had always been braced for — that was mine, and no one had planted it.

That is the thing I have had to sit with.

They built the trap, but they built it out of materials I had been stockpiling my whole life.