“She was going to embarrass you.

She never belonged here — a small-town girl playing house in a family she didn’t understand.

I did what needed doing.

I protected you.” She said it as though it were reasonable, as though protected were a word that could be made to fit what she had done, and I think it was that, more than anything, that finished it for Rhett — not my evidence, not Romy’s words, but the sound of the woman he had believed describing the destruction of his family as a favor.

“You didn’t protect me,” he said.