I looked up at Arthur, and the question must have been plain on my face, because he answered it before I could find the words.

What he told me next rearranged everything I thought I understood about the man I had married and the family I had married into.

Up to that moment I had built a small, manageable story of my situation.

Arthur was a lonely rich man who wanted company and a shield from grasping heirs; I was a desperate mother trading a legal signature for my son’s life; the heirs were greedy, unpleasant people who would sulk and litigate but were, in the end, merely that, unpleasant.

It was an ugly story but a survivable one, and I had made my peace with living inside it.