His confident posture came apart by degrees, his shoulders dropping, his mouth falling slightly open, the coffee mug forgotten and tilting in his hand.

“This is absurd,” he said, and his voice had climbed into something thin and panicked.

“This is — this cannot possibly be legal.

He was my father.

You cannot hand my family’s estate to a — to a maid!”

“Your father anticipated that you would say that very thing,” Samuel replied, with a composure that was somehow more devastating than any anger could have been.