And here the truth did me a mercy.

The very next morning, once the detective’s office made the request, my former therapist confirmed to the investigators, plainly and professionally, what my records actually said.

That my sessions had been for grief, and for the sleeplessness that grief brings, and for nothing else.

That there was no history of delusion anywhere in them, not a single instance, not one.

That a woman losing sleep and weeping over a dead husband is not a woman inventing a living one.