She had never questioned the story, and that was the part that shamed her now, standing in his office with the truth in her hands.

Why would she have questioned it?

A person does not, as a rule, suspect her own husband of forging her surgical consent while she lay unconscious.

The mind does not go there; it has no reason to.

When Dorian told her the surgeons had been forced to act, she had believed him the way you believe the ground will hold your weight — without thinking about it, because the alternative is unlivable.

She had grieved inside his version of events for four years, and the version had felt seamless because he had built it that way, attending every appointment, learning the specialists’ names, performing the role of the devastated husband so completely that no crack ever showed.