“Iris, stop embarrassing yourself in front of our guests.”

Elias, the forensic accountant, opened a thick leather binder on the glass table without any particular urgency.

“Would you like to tell them, Iris,” he said, “or should I?”

I walked toward the marble fireplace, and I let the silence stretch, because I had waited a long time for this, and I intended to say it clearly.

The estate we were standing in had originally belonged to Preston’s grandfather.

Everyone in that room — every guest, every board member, Preston’s own parents — assumed that Preston had inherited it outright, that it was his by blood and by right, the ancestral seat of the great Calloway family.