Every time my brother-in-law drove me home, I would black out and wake up sore. My husband just laughed and said I was out of shape. After the fourth trip, I hid a voice recorder in my purse — and that night I heard a phone call that made me realize the blackouts had never been accidents.

There is a woman I see on Thursday evenings.

I would not have got through the eleventh week without her and I am not going to pretend otherwise to make this sound tidier.

Esteban has written to me twice through lawyers.

The second one is four pages. I have read it once, all the way through, with Birgit sitting across the table from me.

It does not contain the word sorry anywhere on any of the four pages. I checked. Twice.

What it contains is an explanation.

Four years of a position at his firm quietly going wrong. A thing he put money into in 2022 that was never going to work. A charge on his mother’s house that she does not know about.

I believe most of it. That is the strange part.

And it does not do one single thing, for me, in either direction.

And Vonda Prewitt.

I have thought about that woman more than I have thought about my own brother-in-law, which surprises me and does not seem to be going away.