The trap of the balloon structure had been real, and disclosed, and ignored.

All I had done — the only thing I had done — was decline, at last, to be one more soft surface his losses could be quietly wiped onto.

For years, someone had always absorbed the Whitcombes’ shortfalls: a lender who extended, a bank that looked away, a world that gave men like Winston the benefit of a doubt they had never earned.

I had simply bought the paper and stopped absorbing.

That is the quiet engine underneath fortunes like theirs, and almost no one who envies such families understands it.

The Whitcombes were not rich in the way people imagine rich — money in the bank, obligations met, more coming in than going out.