I take the private arrangement because I have a newborn and no leverage and no way to fight a family with that much money and that many lawyers.

I raise my daughter on whatever Beau decides to allow, always aware that it can be withdrawn, always a little grateful, always a little small.

I teach her, without meaning to, by the shape of my own life, that this is what a woman can expect — to be discounted, and to accept it.

That was the future the Draycotts had planned for us, and it was not an unusual future.

It was the ordinary one.