At 8:47 the previous morning I had approved a transaction of two hundred and twenty thousand dollars against the business debt Dorian brought into our marriage, and he spent the rest of that day believing I had simply handed it over the way I always had. Less than a day later I came down the stairs and found his mother wrapping a silver framed photograph of my grandmother in newspaper, his father filling trash bags with my books, and Simone standing in the doorway of my kitchen in my emerald silk robe, drinking from my mug. Dorian dropped a manila envelope on the marble island and told me to sign, that I was useless to him now, that I should take whatever his parents had not yet packed and go. Ophelia said he needed a woman who knew how to build a future. Simone asked me not to make it embarrassing.

I asked her to take off my robe. Then I told all four of them to leave my house, and Dorian laughed for about five minutes.