My grandmother spent her whole life saving so that her granddaughter would never stand at a door she could not afford to open.

And when the day came that I had to open it, I could, because she had made sure of it, decades in advance, one careful dollar at a time.

Chapter 4 — I Said No

On the night everything exploded, Amber and Indigo were waiting in my living room when I got home from work.

Indigo slapped a stack of glossy flyers onto the coffee table — a questionable real-estate development, the kind of scheme that promises everything and delivers nothing — and announced that they needed three million dollars from me to enter as founding partners.

Not asked — announced.