Roland believed my mother controlled that fortune, and my mother let him believe it, because she was terrified that if he ever learned the truth — that neither of them could touch a cent of it until we turned eighteen — he would leave her.

My father’s brother, our uncle Elliot Larkin, a military surgeon deployed overseas, had warned us, in the last calls we ever received from him, that a fortune that large would draw predators the way blood draws them.

Shortly after those warnings, my mother cut him out of our lives entirely — changed our numbers, blocked his emails, told us he was trying to steal our inheritance.

I did not understand, then, that she was not protecting us from a predator.