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Levi looks at him for a second.

“You don’t have to believe me,” he says. “That’s your signature.”

He stands. He takes off the chain with my great-grandfather’s medallion on it and puts it on the table. Then he works his wedding ring off, which takes him three tries, and puts that down beside it.

“By the way, I cleaned out your bank account this morning. I hope your momma can send you money to get back up to the frozen north.”

I stare at the gold on the table. I can’t look away from it. The door slams and the room seems to dissolve into shouting.

“What’s in the folder?” Patrick whispers to me.

“I don’t know. He hid it from me,” I say, but I cannot look away from the jewelry. There is a cone of silence around me. My phone hums and I take it out.

New Activity to your Fairhaven Community Bank Account.

I’m hiccupping from the pain. My eyes are blurring so much I can barely put the passcode in.

I click into it and feel my stomach drop. It’s true. It’s all true. Oh, my God, he’s taken everything.

“Dr. Saint-Jacques? Dr. Saint-Jacques!”

My hands are shaking so badly it takes four attempts to open the app.

“Is this true? Have you been coerced into an abusive relationship?” Pratchett’s voice sounds like it is coming from the end of the world.

I look up at the committee, staring at me with a mixture of hatred, pity, and superiority, and finally my bank app stops being a white screen and loads.

Twenty-five thousand dollars. In. Not out. Timestamped nine forty-one this morning, from an account I know the last four digits of because I have watched him check it at the table.

I swallow and stare at the number. Then I look up.

“Every word my husband has said, every last syllable, is a lie.” I look at Spring and Hughes. “Except for about you two. You really are grotesquely awful people. You deserve each other.”

“Bastien,” Patrick says. “Are you sure about this?”

I pass him my phone and he gulps and looks at me. Patrick rubs his eyes and whispers, “Jesus Christ.”

I shake myself and wipe the tear tracks out of my eyes and address the Committee. “I came here because I thought you deserved your pound of blood, or flesh, or whatever it is you people want. You don’t.” I stand up. “Excusez—” I stop. It’s too polite. “Non. I will never ask your permission again. You have no power over me.” I point to myself and think of a French lesson I once gave Levi. “Moi, je m’excuse.”

I take the ring and the medallion off the table on my way past. I do not run until I’m through the door.

Chapter fifty-two

Levi

There is no time to pack. Everything I own is going into duffel bags.

It does not take long. Half of it never came out of the boxes, because a single-wide has about four feet of closet and we have been living out of cardboard since October like people camping in their own house. Fifteen minutes and gone. That was the whole plan. The Curlicue tonight, and a recruiter in Lynchburg at eight tomorrow morning.

I hear tires screeching to a halt outside.

“Levi!” I hear, and then a small exclamation and a heavy thud.

I rip the bedroom door open so fast it bangs against the wall. Bastien is lying facedown on the floor in the hallway, his ankle still tangled in the straps of the duffel bag I had chucked there two minutes ago.

“Jesus, Bastien!” I run to him and hear something crunch under my boot. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He looks up, and only then does it register that he is not wearing his glasses.