She wanted to cry and could not; her throat had gone completely dry.

For four years she had blamed her own body.

She had carried a quiet, suffocating guilt, certain she had failed the man who talked so often about wanting a family.

And Dorian had watched her grieve through every tear, knowing the whole time exactly what he had done, and why.

It was the four years that undid her, standing in that office — not the single act of the forgery, terrible as it was, but the four years of theater that followed it.

She made herself walk back through them now with this new, unbearable knowledge, and every memory turned over and showed its rotted underside.