They learned, slowly, to sit at one table without lies between them.

As for my mother, the loss of her money never wounded her the way the loss of her audience did — because some people don’t love their family so much as love the power of arranging them.

The last time I saw her was in a courthouse corridor.

“Katya,” she said, hollow.

“Will you ever forgive me?” I looked at her and no longer saw the matriarch of my childhood, only a small, bitter woman standing in the ruins she had built.

“Maybe one day I’ll stop being angry,” I said.