She reserved the room, and paid cash, under Jacqueline’s maiden name.” The crowd of relatives and old family friends around the grave went entirely, completely silent.

Because there it was, sworn and stamped and a decade old: the woman who had told Garrett she saw me in a hotel with another man had been the one in the hotel room, renting it under my name, building the frame with her own hands.

I had reconstructed the whole thing, over the years, the way I later learned to reconstruct anything — patiently, from the paper.

Felicia had not improvised her lie in a moment of opportunity.