My husband shoved me, shattering the bathroom mirror. His mother sneered, “Clean up this disgusting mess.” But as I fell, my husband roared, “What’s in your pocket?!” The red LED of my federal distress fob pulsed. Denied the third click, I threw myself onto the broken glass, and…

made crude, bourbon-soaked jokes at holiday dinners about how Vance needed to apply “a firm, disciplinary hand” to manage a modern wife. And Vance? Vance spent vast sums of money that never materialized in our accounts, vanished for mysterious weekend “conferences,” and routinely returned home smelling of cheap gin and secrets.

I had spent half a decade continue reading …