She set the whole thing up.” And Marcia was off the mattress in a second, perfectly healthy, shrieking that he had dragged her into it because he owed money to dangerous people, that he had set her up to take the fall.

I did not enjoy watching them tear at each other.

I had thought I might.

Instead it was only bleak — two people I had loved, who had never once loved me back in any way that cost them anything, clawing for the exit of a trap they had built together.

There is a fantasy you carry, when someone has wronged you for years, of the moment they finally face it — you imagine it will feel like justice, like a weight lifting, like winning.

It did not feel like any of that.