The old woman had been the single warm room in a cold house.

When Adele was a girl, while Leopold measured his children by their usefulness and Ingrid by their manners, Georgiana had simply been interested in her — had asked her what she thought, and then listened to the answer as though it might change her mind.

She was the one who had taught Adele to read a balance sheet the way other grandmothers taught baking, tracing a finger down a column and saying, Numbers don’t lie, sweetheart, but the people who arrange them do; your whole job is to tell the difference. She had seen, long before anyone else, that Adele had the rarest thing in that family — a conscience that couldn’t be talked out of itself — and she had spent her last years quietly arming it.

The audit rights.

The trust.

The clause.