I sat at my own kitchen table, in the apartment where I’d rationed coffee, and stared at a number that belonged to me — had belonged to me, quietly, growing, the entire time I’d been feeling guilty about the price of Mia’s shoes.

Apex Vanguard had grown beyond anything my father could have dreamed, reinvesting, acquiring, until its holdings included a stake in a group that owned two-point-seven percent of Summit Crest itself — the very company where my husband was a regional director.

I could not walk in and fire Gavin.

It does not work like that.

But I could, all at once, ask questions in rooms he could never enter, among the exact people whose good opinion his whole career depended on.

The dependent wife, it turned out, had been a shareholder the whole time.