They never asked who held the note on the building, or why the rent had not risen in three years while every other storefront on the street turned over twice.

They saw an apron on me exactly one time — the first morning Callum brought his mother by, to show her, I think, how charmingly humble his girlfriend was — and from that single apron they built an entire version of me, complete and unshakeable, and never revised it again.

That is the thing about people like the Whitcombes.

They do not actually look at you.

They glance at you, assign you a category, and then spend the rest of your acquaintance talking to the category.

Theodora had decided within a minute of meeting me that I was a pretty girl of no consequence who had gotten lucky with her son, and everything I did afterward, she filed under that heading.