Junia pocketed every check as it arrived, and said nothing.

As the years went by, Desmond moved out of his mother’s place and into his late grandmother’s decaying house down the road.

He drank every night, avoided the family, and told himself, over and over, that Marlowe had ruined his life.

He built a whole identity out of being her victim.

It was the only thing he had left, and he defended it by never, ever checking a single fact.

There is a particular kind of blindness that is not the same as ignorance, and Desmond lived inside it for four years.