There was no boutique.

There had never been a boutique.

There had only been the money, and the story about the money, and the spending of it.

My family had looked at a grieving old man and seen a resource to be strip-mined, and they had strip-mined him, patiently, for years, and told themselves the whole time that they were the competent ones and he was the fool.

Chapter 8 — The Trust

But my grandfather was not a fool.