“Something like that.” There was no point at all in explaining that the gown had been tailored for me by a private atelier in Milan.

That was the thing about my family: they had built such a complete story about who I was that any fact contradicting it bounced off them, unheard.

I could have told Aunt Lorraine the truth about my life in plain words, and she would have laughed, because it did not fit the Noelle she had decided I was.

So I stopped trying to be heard by people committed to my smallness, and I sat at Table 21, by the kitchen doors, and I waited.

It took me most of my life to understand a thing that seems obvious once you see it: that some people are not mistaken about you, but committed to a version of you, and that the two are wholly different problems requiring different responses.