She was instantly blacklisted from every charitable committee, gala, and country club on the Eastern Seaboard.

The sprawling Hamptons estate, once a symbol of social power, became a locked, silent mausoleum, continuously surrounded by lines of news vans.

I did not watch the television broadcasts. I was too busy packing boxes.

Two weeks later, an hard autumn rain was coming down in thick sheets, beating relentlessly against the single window of my new, modest apartment in the city.

The trust fund had cleared—a quiet transfer of an enormous sum of wealth that I immediately legally locked into a secure trust solely to fund my final years of architectural school and, eventually, the high cost of medical school.

I wanted to learn how to build things, yes, but my time on that wooden stage had solidified a new truth: I wanted to learn how to rebuild people.