Ever.” Then she was gone into the terminal, and whatever future he’d sold her went with her.

I never saw Dagny again, and I did not try to.

But I’ll admit I thought about her, in the months after, more kindly than I’d have believed possible on the day I first saw her name in a report.

She had walked onto that plane believing she was starting a life with a man who loved her, and she had walked off it understanding she’d been furniture in someone else’s lie, the same as me.

Later, when Vesna was building the dissipation claim, a paralegal reached her to confirm the timeline of the condo, and Dagny — who owed me nothing, who could have made herself scarce — told the plain truth about what Vaughan had said the money was for.

She didn’t have to.