I have never been especially humble, and I was not about to start on the day I foreclosed on a yacht.

It was something more like an anchor.

The Whitcombes had spent their whole lives performing a self for an audience, terrified every moment that the audience would stop clapping and the whole thing would come down — and it had come down, because a performance is all it ever was.

I did not want to live like that.

Larkspur Street was the opposite of a performance.

It was a real place, that really needed doing, full of people who liked me before they had any idea what I was worth and would like me exactly the same after.

I had money the Whitcombes could not imagine.

But the thing I actually owned, the thing no martini and no mother could ever pour off of me, was a life that did not depend on anyone’s applause.

That was the fortune.

The rest was just paperwork.

THE END.