I was not going to that gala to fight my husband.

I was going to that gala to watch him, in a room full of the people whose opinion he valued more than his family, decide entirely on his own to show everyone exactly who he was.

And I understood, dressing for it, the peculiar power of restraint that Sarah had been trying to teach me.

Everything in me wanted to arrive as an accusation, to walk in already angry, already loud, already the wronged wife demanding justice.

But an accusation can be argued with.