“You told me you’d been living in an apartment in South Boston for almost a year.” “I can explain—” “He told me the same thing when I asked about the late nights,” I offered, pleasantly.

“It seems to be his favorite line for whenever a story starts coming apart.”

I had come onto that plane braced to hate Dagny.

I had built a version of her in my mind over the five days since the report — the smiling home-wrecker, the young woman who had knowingly taken what was mine.

But sitting beside her in that narrow row, watching the color drain from her face as the arithmetic of his lies came clear, I understood that she was not that woman.

She was another person he had done this to.