She was a person who genuinely enjoyed having someone beneath her to push, and who had simply been starved of the opportunity in the weeks she’d spent performing warmth for me.

Watching her was like watching someone finally take off shoes that had been pinching all day.

This, plainly, was the comfortable version of her.

The dinners were the costume.

This was the skin.

Chapter 9 — The Bracelet

Then she decided I was a thief.

She came down from her rooms holding her purse and announced, loudly, to the empty foyer and to me, that a diamond bracelet was missing, and that it had been in her bag, and that I had been upstairs, and that these things did not need to be spelled out.

She watched my face while she said it, hunting for the fear she expected — the particular fear of a poor woman accused by a rich one, who knows that in that contest her word weighs nothing.

I did not give it to her.