Most people she could dismiss; they did not know me well enough, or care enough, to notice anything wrong.

But Teresa knew me.

Teresa had watched me grow, had sat with my dying mother, had thirteen years of reading my moods and my house.

If anyone would sense that something was off, it would be her.

And so, in the cold ledger of Vanessa’s plan, Teresa was not a person at all.

She was a variable to be removed.

I had brought this woman into a home full of people I loved, and she had walked through it appraising each of them for how much danger they posed to her, and I had called that love and set a wedding date.