Our prenup, together with the evidence of her part in the cover-up, left her without spousal support.

She sold the car, moved into a small rental, and at thirty-six took her first real full-time job, an entry-level coordinator role; the friends who’d filled her calendar stopped calling once the parties stopped.

I take no satisfaction in that part, and I want to be careful how I say it, because it would be easy to.

Lindsay’s downfall was not something I engineered; it was the simple arithmetic of a life that had been entirely subsidized — by her father’s name, by my income, by a social circle that valued her for the parties she threw with my money — coming due all at once.

When the subsidies stopped, there was very little underneath.

And that is its own kind of tragedy: a woman of thirty-six discovering she had never been given, or never built, a single thing that was actually hers.