It was simply what they did, reflexively, without weighing it, the way other people breathe.

My jewelry, my house, my hospitality, my labor, my dignity — all of it had been, to them, simply available, there for the taking, requiring no permission and inspiring no gratitude, because they had never once conceived of me as a person who owned things rather than a resource they were entitled to draw on.

Megan pulling her sleeve over my bracelet, in the middle of her family’s eviction, was the whole truth of them in miniature: even now, even ruined, even surrounded by the consequences of their taking, still taking, still hiding the take, still unable to imagine that the things they helped themselves to had ever really belonged to someone else.

I did not feel triumph, watching her hide her wrist.