I MARRIED A PRISONER FOR MONEY WHILE HE WAS SERVING A TWELVE-YEAR SENTENCE — BUT AFTER HIS CONVICTION WAS OVERTURNED, HE CAME TO MY APARTMENT WITH A BLACK BOX AND SAID, “NOW IT’S MY TURN TO BE HONEST.”

I MARRIED A PRISONER FOR MONEY WHILE HE WAS SERVING A TWELVE-YEAR SENTENCE — BUT AFTER HIS CONVICTION WAS OVERTURNED, HE CAME TO MY APARTMENT WITH A BLACK BOX AND SAID, “NOW IT’S MY TURN TO BE HONEST.”

When I agreed to marry Silas, I didn’t care whether he was innocent. He’d been convicted of stealing from his family’s charitable foundation, and honestly, at the time, his guilt or innocence felt like someone else’s problem to sort out.

I was twenty-seven, drowning in overdue rent notices, raising my younger brother, Caleb, mostly alone since our parents weren’t in any position to help either of us. So when Silas’s mother, Deborah, offered me two thousand dollars a month to become his wife on paper, I said yes before shame had the chance to catch up with me properly.