Instead she simply stood there and came apart quietly, from the inside, as the thing she had built collapsed around her in real time.

For ten years Felicia had been the author of the Remington story — the trusted friend, the truth-teller, the woman who had bravely exposed a cheating wife and then, out of loyalty, stayed to help the family heal.

She had lived inside that story so long that I think she had half-come to believe it herself.

And now, in front of everyone who mattered to her, the story was being read back to her in reverse, sworn and notarized, and there was no version of it she could still tell.

She could not be the truth-teller; the truth was in Garrett’s hands and it was about her.