They Held My Funeral While I Was Still Breathing. Then My Seven-Year-Old Nephew Looked Into the Coffin and Said, “Mommy, Aunt Madelyn Is Looking at Me”

It was not passion.

It was not even, in the end, really about hate.

It was arithmetic.

They had run the numbers on my continued existence and found that I was worth more to them gone, and they had acted on the finding the way you’d act on any sound investment decision.

I have made a kind of peace with a great deal of it.

I have never made peace with that.