It is a window into a person’s soul, and I had spent months keeping the curtain drawn over it because I did not want to know what was on the other side.

My father used to say that you learn everything you need to know about a person by watching how they treat someone who can do nothing for them.

He meant it as practical wisdom, a rule for judging character in business, and I had nodded along to it my whole life without ever quite applying it where it mattered most.

Vanessa was unfailingly gracious to anyone who could be useful to her, and quietly cruel to anyone who could not, and that pattern was not a detail of her personality.