leaving rooms before someone asked her to. The motion was almost involuntary by now — the calculation happening before she was conscious of it.
Arthur kept holding her hand.
Later, walking to the car, she told him what she was thinking.
“They think I’m a monster.”
“No,” he said. “They think you’re a thief. There’s a difference.”
That almost made her laugh.
The truth was too complicated to explain in a room full of people who had already drawn their conclusions. Yes, Arthur’s money made life feel safer. She liked knowing the heat would stay on in January. She liked not counting items in the grocery cart and putting things back before the register. She liked sleeping in a house where one bad week wouldn’t result in a phone call asking to sleep on someone else’s couch.
She would not pretend otherwise.
But she hadn’t married him for it. She had
