That’s all that was.”

I turned to face her.

“Preparation for what, exactly?” I asked.

“For making yourself the beneficiary of accounts we never once discussed?

For redirecting my father’s legacy to yourself on our wedding day, in a document you hoped I’d sign without reading?” And here, at last, the mask came fully off, and what was underneath was not shame but a cold, clarifying entitlement.

“We were getting married,” she said, as if that settled it, as if a wedding were simply the mechanism by which what was mine became hers.