I said nothing.

“My parents were nine weeks from a foreclosure sale. That was a real letter on a real refrigerator and my mother had a real stroke four months later.”

Vanessa’s voice was completely level. “He told me he had money that was doing nothing. He told me he could move it. I did not ask which account, and I should have, and I have said that under oath four times.

“But I want you to know that you have spent seven years thinking of that mortgage as a prop in a story about a man being cruel to you. And it was a house.

There were people in it.”

“That was my combat pay.”