It was, in the end, all of their mistakes.

And it was the making of Elena Miller, and the saving of me.

I have kept, from that whole terrible week, one image that I return to whenever I am tempted, as the powerful always are, to slip back into the old blindness.

It is the image of Chloe leaning over my bed, whispering my death into my ear, absolutely certain she was alone with a dying man, while ten feet away a housekeeper changed the flowers and heard every word.

That single image contains the entire lesson, and the entire indictment, of how people like the person I used to be move through the world.