He had done to her exactly what he had tried to do to me and to the judge: constructed a version of reality, confident and complete and false, and moved her through it.

The only difference was that Rachel had been inside his false world long enough to help build a wing of it.

She had believed she was helping her husband manage a difficult, selfish, declining mother-in-law.

She was learning, in real time, in front of strangers, that she had instead been the instrument of a man robbing his own family.

I did not forgive her.

But I understood, watching her, that Michael left no one around him unharmed, not even the people who thought they were on his side.