A year on, I sold the Gold Coast house and bought a smaller place on the edge of the city, a quieter home where no one would ever again mistake luxury for a license to look down on the people who keep a life running.

On moving day, Teresa found the ring box in the study safe and asked me what I meant to do with it.

“Sell it,” I said.

“And the money?” I thought about the thing she had told me in the hospital, that the physical pain had been nothing next to the fear that no one would ever take her word over a wealthy woman’s.

“Every cent goes to a shelter,” I said, “for women trying to get out of dangerous homes.” Teresa smiled, the first full and unguarded smile I had seen from her in a very long time.