“The key, Dad,” he said.

“Where is the box?”

What struck Alvin most, hearing the whole sequence laid out, was how none of it had ever presented itself, in the moment, as an attack.

That was the genius and the horror of it.

If Veronica had walked in on the first day and demanded the bedroom, the credit cards, the income, and the power of attorney, his parents would have refused, and thrown her out, and the whole scheme would have died on the doorstep.

No one surrenders their entire life at once; the instinct to resist is too strong.