He began, carefully, to build a story about me.

He would move my keys and then wonder aloud, gently, whether I’d been forgetful lately.

He would engineer a small argument, capture my frustrated reply on his phone, and share the clip — out of context, stripped of what he’d said to provoke it — with our mutual friends, until the picture forming in their minds was of a wife losing her grip.

I could feel the ground being prepared under me, but I could not yet see the shape of what he meant to build on it.

I found that out the night of the company’s ten-year anniversary gala.

Chapter 5 — The Safe