I did not yet understand that in a healthy braid, both strands bear weight, and in ours, only one strand had ever been asked to bend.
The foundation was the last thing that was fully mine.
So of course, in the end, it was the thing they took most completely.
Chapter 3 — Delphine
If Weston was the architect, Delphine was the one who knew where the load-bearing walls were, because I had shown her the blueprints myself.
We’d met eleven years before any of this, two young women at a nonprofit conference who’d ended up laughing in the back of a terrible keynote.
She was quick and funny and she made me feel less alone in a field full of people performing sincerity.
When my foundation grew large enough to need a finance director, I didn’t post the job.
I called her.
I wanted someone I trusted with the money that vulnerable women were counting on, and I trusted Delphine more than I trusted most of my own family.