And Leontyne had said yes.

Not reluctantly, from what the emails showed; she had helped shape the story.

This was a woman who had lived for eight years on money my trusts provided, in a house I owned, and who had spent those years finding new ways to make me feel small — and when her son proposed to finish the job by having me declared mad, she had volunteered to be his witness.

I had always known Leontyne disliked me.

I had filed it under snobbery, under the ordinary cruelty of a certain kind of mother-in-law.

I had not understood, until I saw her name in that email chain, that her contempt had a floor low enough to include perjury aimed at my sanity.