Genevieve believed the real one was scheduled for Monday, during what was supposed to be our honeymoon: a power of attorney, presented as routine paperwork, to be signed by a relaxed and trusting new husband a thousand miles from anyone who might tell him to read it first.

The timing was surgical.

Marry on Saturday, so that the legal fact of the marriage was in place.

Isolate on Sunday, on a plane, away from my daughter and my lawyers and my own study.

Sign on Monday, somewhere warm, where I would not think to be careful.

By the time I came home, tanned and happy, the machinery would already be turning, and the house and the accounts and the firm I had built would be sliding, quietly and legally, into the hands of a woman I had known, it turned out, not at all.

What chilled me most, once I understood the plan, was its patience.