He had not mistreated Maria.

He had done something in its own way worse: he had failed to notice her at all, had let her become invisible, a smoothly functioning part of the machinery of his comfort, present every day and entirely unseen.

It is a particular blindness that wealth produces.

When you can pay for everything, the people who provide it begin to disappear into the service they render; the driver becomes the drive, the cook becomes the meal, the housekeeper becomes the clean house, and the human being performing the function recedes until you could pass them on the street and not know their face.

Daniel had lived in rooms Maria kept, for three years, and had never learned she had a son, because some part of him had never registered that she had a life at all beyond the hours she spent maintaining his.