They had not just tried to take everything I owned.

They had tried to make me the one who went to prison for it.

Whatever thread of hesitation still ran through me, whatever ghost of the accommodating wife might have wavered, Faye’s words burned it away.

There would be no smoothing over.

There would be a reckoning, and it would be total, and it would be lawful, and it would be mine.

Chapter 19 — Twenty-Two Minutes