The Vances had needed me, desperately, for my money and my reputation and my clean name to hang their crimes on, and I had allowed that need to feel like love, because being needed is a powerful thing, and a person starved of genuine love will accept being needed as a substitute for a very long time before she notices the difference.

But there is a difference, and it is everything.

To be loved is to be valued for who you are.

To be needed, in the way the Vances needed me, is to be valued for what you provide, which means you are valued exactly as long as you keep providing and not one moment longer, which means you are not valued at all, only used.

It took the discovery of their scheme to finally show me the difference, to reveal that the marriage I had thought was a difficult love had never been love in any direction, only a long, elaborate act of consumption.