Thirty-five thousand dollars, six months of my life, poured into one more attempt to purchase a love that the numbers had been telling me, all along, did not exist.

I am an analyst.

I had simply refused, for five years, to analyze the only account that could break my heart.

Chapter 3 — The Whole Family Together

The moment we arrived, I got stuck at the front desk untangling a discrepancy over the dietary requests that Eleanor had changed three times, and Julian said he’d take everyone up to the rooms and come right back down for me.

“We’ll come right back down to get you,” he said, and he kissed my forehead the way you’d pat a distracted child, and he went up with his parents and his sister Victoria and her husband Raymond and two cousins who had invited themselves at the last minute — all of them, up into the tower of suites I had paid for.