He never has.”

Marguerite’s face went slack for a moment, then flushed.

“You lying —”

“If you and Bristol want thirty thousand dollars for a yacht,” I said, “I suggest you sell the handbags.”

It was the truth, and it had always been the truth, and the reason it landed like a bomb was that they had spent three years building their entire sense of entitlement on a foundation that did not exist.

In their minds, this was Trevor’s house, and I was merely the wife who happened to live in it and pay for it — an arrangement that made my money theirs by a kind of familial right.