The two days between sending Anwen away and Vaughan’s flight were the strangest of the whole thing.

I had to keep living inside a marriage I already knew was over — cook the dinners, ask about his day, let him kiss my cheek on his way out the door — while the case that would end it assembled itself quietly around us.

There is a specific loneliness to that, to lying in bed beside a man who is mentally already in Miami while you are already in a lawyer’s office, both of you performing a marriage neither of you is in.

I did not enjoy it.

But Vesna had been clear, and my sister had been clear, and the harder, wiser part of me had been clear: the performance was the price of the evidence, and the evidence was the price of my freedom, and I was not going to trade a lasting freedom for the momentary relief of throwing a plate.

So I performed.