But you can absolutely win an audit, and he had been kind enough to leave me a complete one.

Chapter 10 — Solene Emory

By nine the next morning I was across a desk from Solene Emory, a family lawyer with a reputation for being very calm and very thorough.

She went through my stack of documents slowly, and then she gave me the assessment that made the floor stop moving under me for the first time since the doorbell rang.

“Your father provided the down payment on the apartment, and there’s a signed promissory note documenting it as a gift to you,” she said.

“The car came entirely from your own savings before the marriage.