Dorothea read it over my shoulder and something cold and satisfied moved across her face.

“He’s just put grand theft and extortion in writing,” she said, adjusting her glasses.

“That was generous of him.” Two days later, told plainly that arrest was the alternative, Christina carried the stolen belongings into a police station herself.

When a detective went through her bag for the missing corporate binder, she happened to see the top page — the summary of holdings, the list of subsidiaries, all of it under my name — and I am told the color left her face entirely.

The daughter-in-law she had treated as unpaid help owned more than her family had ever let themselves imagine.

I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a small, human satisfaction in that image — Christina, who had corrected my seasoning and inspected my mopping, staring at a page that told her exactly how badly she had misjudged the woman she’d tried to make a servant.