She said it the way some people say a title.

I have tried, in the two years since, not to hate Rosalind, and mostly I’ve managed it, because I understand the shape of the hole Odette poured herself into.

Rosalind’s husband was long dead.

Her house was enormous and largely empty, staffed by people paid to be there.

Vaughn was her only child and he had grown into a man who visited out of obligation and checked his phone through lunch.

She was a proud woman going soft and frightened at the edges, and what she wanted more than the money she already had was to matter to someone before she died — to be needed, to be central, to have a small warm person climb into her lap and call her something.