I have thought since about why the grave was the line I drew first, before the accounts, before the buildings, before any of the things that a sensible woman protecting herself would have prioritized — and I think it is because the grave was the one place where the truth about who I was had never been in question.

My father, Arthur Vance, had known exactly what I was worth, had built an empire and handed it to me because he trusted me to be its steward, had never once needed me to shrink so that he could feel tall.

My mother had loved me as I was, not as I could be made convenient.

In fifteen years of marriage I had slowly forgotten the woman those two people had raised, had let her be talked over and edited down and told at dinner tables that she was useless and barren and lucky to be tolerated.

But she still existed, intact, in the memory of the two who had known her true size, and their resting place was the last uncontaminated ground in my life, the one spot where I had never once been made small.

Of course I defended it first.