We had not reached the lawn when Felicia Stanford stepped directly into our path.

Felicia.

The manipulative, patient woman who had waited for my marriage to fall apart with the calm of a person who already knew it would, because she was the one dismantling it.

She was Garrett’s fiancée now, of course.

She had spent ten years occupying the life she had emptied out for herself, and here she was, blocking the gravel path in expensive black, looking down at my five children with a contempt she did not bother to hide.

“Well,” she said, and she pitched it loud enough for the nearest mourners to hear, the way she did everything, for an audience.