“Don’t you ever touch her again.” Vanessa stared at me, and I watched fury and disbelief war across her face, because this was not a David she had met before.

“Are you seriously,” she said, “going to take the maid’s word over the word of the woman you’re going to marry?” It was meant to be unanswerable.

It assumed a whole architecture of the world, of who is believed and who is not, of what a wealthy woman’s word is worth against a housekeeper’s.

And I heard myself give her the truest answer I had.

“I’m not going to take anyone’s word,” I said.