I took my phone out of my coat pocket.

“Both of you have thirty minutes to pack whatever you can carry,” I said, “before I call security to do it for you.” Then I picked up my purse and my coat, and I walked to the front door, and I opened it, and I paused on the threshold and looked back at the two of them — the elderly woman who had just struck me, the young woman who had just demanded thirty thousand dollars — standing in the enormous living room of a house that was legally, unquestionably mine.

“Sell the handbags,” I said.

And I stepped out, and I closed the door behind me, softly, because I no longer had anything to slam.

Chapter 7 — Why I Kept My Hands Down

I have thought many times since about the half-second in which I chose not to hit her back, because it was, without exaggeration, the most important decision I made that entire day, and possibly the most important of the entire ordeal — and I made it in the space of a single breath, with my face still stinging.