Douglas let out a long breath.

Nancy’s hand came up to her mouth.

The empty will that had humiliated me in the lawyer’s office, that had turned my own daughter’s suspicion against me, revealed itself in that moment as the most loving document in the whole affair — a decoy my husband had built to absorb an attack he knew was coming, so that the attack would spend itself harmlessly against a thing that held nothing at all.”

Shirley’s composure cracked at last, two spots of color rising in her cheeks.