Victoria did not leave the master bedroom for a long time after the full confrontation.

She sat on the edge of the bed she had once shared with Marcus and stared at the ordinary objects in the room—the lamp, the dresser, the closet door half-open on the clothes she had not finished unpacking from the hotel—and felt the full shape of the secret settle into her body like a physical weight. The bag in the linen closet. The messages on the phone. The bruises on her daughter’s skin. The word yes. The word love. The logistics of the rooms and the bed and the housekeeper. The felt sense of the...