Adele had asked her once, when the trust was being drawn up, why the clause was so specific — why hospitalization, why medical incapacity, why familial duress, as though her grandmother had scripted a scene.

And Georgiana had looked at her with those pale, unhurried eyes and said, Because I know my son, and I know how men like him think about a woman’s weakest hour.

They don’t see a person in pain.

They see an opening.

If they ever come for you, Adele, they’ll come when you’re flat on your back and can’t run.

So I’m going to make your weakest hour the one moment they can’t touch you. At the time it had seemed almost paranoid, a grim old woman imagining the worst of her own family.