It had been a consumption habit wearing tradition’s clothes, and I had been the one quietly funding the costume, and when I stopped, the costume came off, and underneath it was simply a group of people who had enjoyed spending money that was not theirs.

Spending other people’s money is a particular kind of pleasure, loose and guiltless and generous-feeling, and I understood now that half of what I had mistaken for the family’s warmth had simply been the glow of that pleasure, lit at my expense.

Chapter 17 — The Blinders Come Off

The incident did to my marriage what two years of my quiet generosity never could have, which was to force Derek, at last, to see his own family clearly, because they turned on him too, and a man will forgive in his family what he will not forgive once it is aimed at him.

The demands that came in the weeks after the birthday were not only that I apologize.