As a prosecutor, it always frustrated me not to know precisely what happened during a crime. I never feared I had the wrong defendant, but not knowing exactly how it all unfolded always bothered me. Those elusive pieces and their sequence were forever secreted in the defendant’s mind.

That was never the case with Lauren’s murder. I know how everything fit together, and have for some time.

I didn’t think Stuart knew about my affair. When Lauren was killed, like everyone else, I believed that Richard was guilty. I had assumed that despite my plea to her in the park on our last night together, she did exactly what she said she would—went home and told Richard everything. And knowing Richard, or at least thinking I did, it seemed more than possible that he would have killed her for her infractions.

But when the gun was found and traced back to Gregory Papamichael, I realized that it had to have been Stuart. Gregory gave me the Glock 19 shortly after Jacob was born, right after the case we worked together ended, when Stuart insisted we keep a firearm in the house. When I handed Papamichael’s old service weapon to Stuart, I told him that I never wanted to see it again.

And then, whatever doubt I clung to that it might all be some type of mistake—that maybe Papamichael had given a weapon to Lauren too—was erased when the text messages Lauren received were shown to have come from my phone. Richard couldn’t have sent them. My iPhone—the one used to lure Lauren to Central Park—was passcode protected. Richard, of course, did not know my passcode was Jacob’s middle name: Benjamin. But Stuart did.

“I didn’t kill Lauren,” I tell Ella. “I loved her.”

Ella looks at me skeptically. I’m uncertain which part of my statement she finds false: that I didn’t kill Lauren or that I loved her.

“Do you think Lauren would forgive me?” I ask.

I suspect my question has surprised Ella. I’m certain that she gave considerable thought to how Lauren would have reacted to her decision to dismiss the charges against me, but I’m equally certain that she has not considered at all what our boss would think about my failure to turn on my husband.

At least twenty seconds pass. I’m content to wait for as long as necessary for Ella to respond.

“I think she might understand, but forgive . . . I just don’t know,” she finally says.

This is a generous response. I’m not sure Lauren would understand. She dedicated her professional life to helping women find the courage to testify against their abusers. I’m certain that she’d wonder why I haven’t done everything I could to make my husband pay for his crime.