The thing inside the walls — the only thing that had ever actually been at stake — was this: four people who loved each other, and a Saturday, and pancakes with too many sprinkles.

Nathan had believed he was after my money.

He had never understood that the money was not the treasure; the money was just the moat.

The treasure was three children and the ordinary, unremarkable, irreplaceable life we had built, the life where a boy in a tiny suit could stand in the wreckage of a ruined wedding and think about breakfast, because his world was, at bottom, secure — because his mother had made sure it stayed that way.

Nathan had come to steal a fortune and had never once seen the actual fortune, which had been standing beside me the whole time in a small suit and two matching dresses, holding hands.