There was no way for me to know.

But I have had to make my peace, since, with how completely and how long I believed a lie, and how little the believing was my fault, and how much it cost us all the same.

I say this partly for any other person who has ever been deceived so completely and then been tempted to hate themselves for the believing.

There is a particular shame that comes with having been fooled, a voice that says you should have known, that the signs were there, that a sharper or a stronger woman would have seen through it.