Every instinct I had screamed to confront her, to shout, to demand how she could do this to a man who had loved her.

But I had learned, in forty years, that the loudest instinct is usually the one that loses the case.

So I lay still and breathed slow and let her believe she slept beside a fool.

And in the dark, behind my closed eyes, the frightened old man I had been for a year quietly died, and the lawyer I had buried with Bess came back to take his place, and began, methodically, to plan.

Chapter 18 — The Morning Performance

The next morning I did precisely what Dulce expected.