The blood drained from Daniel’s tanned face. He looked at the badge, then the detective, then me, real panic bleeding in for the first time.

“Claire!” he stammered. “Tell them it was an accident! Tell them you slipped!”

I reached up and slowly removed the dark lenses. I looked at the blurry, pathetic shape of the man I’d married the day before. My eyes were bloodshot and swollen and weeping on their own, but my gaze was steady.

“You told me to stop overreacting, Daniel,” I said. “So I did. I stopped reacting. Now I’m letting the law react for me.”

Vivian Cross was arrested at a country-club luncheon that evening, led out past her horrified friends in handcuffs, charged with aggravated assault with a caustic chemical.

Daniel was arrested two hours later in the hospital parking garage — charged as an accessory once investigators reviewed the footage of him restraining me during the attack.