One read: Once the baby comes, Samantha will think she runs this house, but she’d better remember whose name is on the deed. Another: Brian’s too weak to put her in her place, so I’ll have to do it myself. I read them in a copy the detective showed me later, and I felt no shock, only a strange, level confirmation, because they were not a revelation.

They were simply, finally, in writing, the thing I had felt aimed at me across every dinner for two years.

Brenda had not lost her temper that night in the hallway.

She had, by her own account, months earlier, decided it was her job to put me in my place, and had been waiting, the way such people wait, for the moment that would let her.

The slap was not a snapped nerve.