The real thing, the thing that actually freed me, had cost the Whitcombes nothing and had happened where none of them could see it: a woman deciding, once and finally, that she would never again make herself smaller so that smaller people could feel large.

“Take me to Larkspur Street,” I said, settling my bag on my shoulder.

“I’ve got a shift at five, and the regulars like their coffee on time.”

Kira glanced up from her tablet with the faint, dry almost-smile she allowed herself perhaps twice a year, and put the yacht behind us in her notes, and told the officer at the helm where to steer.

And as the launch came around toward the working end of the harbor — away from the white hulls and toward the plain concrete pier where the real boats tie up — I thought about why, of everything I could have done with that afternoon, of every glittering place a woman with my balance sheet could have gone, the only thing I wanted was to stand behind a counter I already owned and hand a regular his coffee at five.

It was not humility.