I knew—and Caroline knew—that since the investigation began, my status had slipped—or risen—from that of her husband and equal to that of a person she indulged. Gratitude and guilt played a part in this. I’d worked my ass off at the office for years while she puttered away in her sculpture studio. Then, three years ago, Caroline hit the jackpot, landing a piece in the Whitney Biennial. This led to more exhibits, one-person shows in several cities, including New York, and dozens of studio visits from thin, beautiful women and their sleek young husbands who smelled (like me, I suppose) of fresh cash, or from scrawny, perfumed old bats whose doddering mates brought to mind country houses and slobbering retrievers. Everything my wife had yet to sculpt for the next three years was already sold. We’d talked about my quitting, pursuing anthropology or social work like I’d always said I wanted to, or just relaxing, for Christ’s sake. But our overhead was so high: the house in Presidio Terrace, the girls in private school heading toward college, skating lessons, riding lessons, piano lessons, tennis camp in the summers—I wanted them to have all of it, all of it and more, for the rest of their lives. Even Caroline’s respectable income could not have begun to sustain it. Then let’s change, she’d said. Let’s scale back. But the idea filled me with dread; I wasn’t a sculptor, I wasn’t a painter, I wasn’t a person who made things. What I’d busted my chops all these years to create was precisely the life we led now. If we tossed that away, what would have been the point?