There was a lesson in how fast they turned on each other, and I did not have to construct it; it constructed itself.

For years these people had presented themselves to the world as a family — loyal, close, the kind who took care of their own.

It had always been a fiction, and the fiction had a simple engine, which was my money.

As long as there was money flowing through Noreen, there were relatives who loved her and a daughter who came around and a son who could play the generous host.

The affection was real in exactly the way a subscription is real: it lasted precisely as long as the payments did.

The moment the money stopped, the whole warm apparatus of their supposed closeness evaporated in days.