And he had spent eighteen months quietly siphoning money out of my business, in small careful increments, disguising the theft in my own ledgers, stealing from me not in a moment of desperation but methodically, patiently, month after month, while sleeping beside me every night and calling me his wife every day.

That is a specific and terrible kind of betrayal, the betrayal that requires sustained, intimate access, that can only be committed by someone close enough to be trusted and cold enough to exploit the trust.

A stranger who robs you has taken your money.

A husband who robs you, slowly, for a year and a half, from inside your own home and your own accounts, has taken something worse: he has revealed that the intimacy itself was a lie, that all the trust on which a marriage rests was, to him, merely a vulnerability to be mined.

I could survive losing twenty-five thousand dollars; I make more than that.