After that, nobody asked whether I’d slipped.

The house was searched before sunrise. Police found the hidden phones exactly where I told them to look. They found my journal, sealed in plastic under a loose floorboard. They found forged documents in my mother’s desk and bank transfers moving money out of my college fund and into Thomas’s gambling account.

Mom tried to cry when Aunt Evelyn walked in. “My baby,” she sobbed, reaching for me.

I stepped in behind my aunt. “No,” I said. “You chose him every single day.”