I understand now that he was planning for the exact, probable one he had watched approaching for forty years, and he built the wall high enough to hold long after his own hands were gone.

He knew his wife.

He simply loved his granddaughter more than he feared telling the truth about the woman he’d married.

Frances worshipped Doreen — the golden child, a woman nearing fifty who had never held a job for more than a few months and lived entirely on our mother’s accounts.

Presley was simply an upgraded version of her mother: an entitled kid who had once thrown a screaming fit in a restaurant because her sparkling water wasn’t cold enough.

A familiar nausea rolled through me as Frances, draped in a cream silk pantsuit that had cost more than Quinn made in a summer, steered Presley toward the closed doors of the three-car garage, whispering in her ear with a gleeful little smile.