People love that story.

It lets them feel wise for having suspected it all along.

And I had no doubt that Victoria had rehearsed it, and had counted on it, and had assumed that a woman like me, poor and plain and out of my depth, would crumble under it or slink away.

What she had not counted on, what neither of them had counted on, was that their father had spent his final strength not on defending the ordinary story but on assembling, quietly and in advance, the extraordinary truth that would blow it apart.

She had brought a rehearsed speech to a room where the facts were already sitting in a manila envelope on the table.