It is a comfortable arrangement for the person on top of it, and I had let him have it, year after year, because objecting would have required a fight and I had been choosing the cease-fire.

I understand now that every time I let the flattering version stand uncorrected, I was not keeping the peace.

I was teaching him, one small concession at a time, that there would never be a cost to underestimating me.

He learned the lesson well.

It would prove, in the end, the most expensive thing I ever taught anyone.

He had never asked why my late mother’s investment office occupied three floors of a building downtown.

He had never wondered what, exactly, I did on the days I said I was “at the foundation.” He had never once connected the quiet, agreeable wife at his dinners to the firm that moved quietly through the financial pages under a name he had no reason to associate with her.