There was, moreover, a prenuptial agreement, signed before their wedding.

He had built all of it out of sight, and hidden all of it deliberately, and lived, for the length of his marriage, as a man of modest means.

“I never told her,” he said, “because I noticed something, a long time ago.

When I had money, when it was known that I had money, everyone was around me.

Warm, and attentive, and close.

And on the few occasions I let it seem that the money was gone — that I had lost it, that there was nothing left — those same people slowly drifted away.