Neighbors watched with morbid interest as Maggie met with trustees and lawyers. “Poor thing,” someone muttered. “He left her to pick up the pieces.” The narrative hardened in the public imagination: Daniel the secretive, Maggie the betrayed. Inside, she felt the words like stitches pulling at a wound that would not close.
At night, she dreamed of a ledger that opened like a mouth and swallowed their life whole. She woke with the sensation of someone else’s pulse in the house. Her life was turned upside down, and at times, she couldn’t help feeling bitterly angry toward the man who had left her.