The rest of the money — the great remaining bulk of it — I did not spend at all.

I placed it into an irrevocable educational trust for Lily, structured to be entirely beyond the reach of anyone, ever, that will fund her education and her start in life and, if it is managed as I intend it to be, her children’s after her.

Luca had spent our whole marriage treating my daughter’s inheritance as his lottery ticket.

I made certain, permanently and legally, that he would never touch one cent of it, and that she would never have to depend on a man’s whim for her security the way I had let myself, for a little while, forget that I did not.

That last part is the one I think about most, standing over my daughter’s crib at night, because it is the real inheritance I am trying to leave her, and it is not the money.