There had been no betrayal — only a frightened pregnant woman asking to explain.

There had been no robbery by his wife — only his own mother, draining the account with his own access code the morning after.

There had been no rich lover — only an unpaid attorney trying for years to hand him the facts.

Every beam of the structure he had leaned on was rotten, had always been rotten, and he had known, somewhere, not to test them, which was why he had never checked the app.

The collapse did not just take his belief about Marlowe.

It took his belief about himself — the last, most necessary fiction, that whatever else was true, he had at least been the one sinned against.