I had wanted the very same things and called them by nobler names.

So the hatred curdled, as I sat there, into something more useful and more painful: not hatred of her, but recognition of myself in her — the sudden, sickening understanding that the shallow, status-hungry woman I found so contemptible was the truest possible portrait of the man I had chosen to become, and that I had been staring at my own reflection for thirteen years and calling it my wife.

I grabbed the glossy program off my lap and tore through it, and near the back my eyes locked on a single line. Special Guest Assessor and Founder of the Keystone Educational Foundation: Coraline Verlaine. The booklet slipped from my hand to the carpet.

She was not a victim.