Except, I realized with a sudden, sickening clarity, I was the only one ever asked to bleed.

I nodded. I smiled the smile I had perfected over three decades of invisibility. “Of course,” I said. “I understand.”

But I didn’t. And as I retreated to the kitchen to scrub the Le Creuset pot while the party raged on without me, something inside me didn’t just break; it shifted. It was the sound of a fault line snapping before the earthquake hits.

And for the first time in my life, I began to plot my escape.

The Architect of Shadows

To understand why I did what I did, you have to understand the architecture of the Dixon family.