For eight years they had positioned themselves above me — the refined mother-in-law, the glamorous sister-in-law, both of them condescending to the modest wife who fretted over dishes — and the whole arrangement had rested on the belief that they had something I lacked.

Money.

Standing.

Class.

And every bit of the money and standing and class they had lorded over me had come, through channels they never saw, from me.

Corvina’s boutique, the failed one she still somehow used as evidence of her sophistication, had been kept alive for two years by my capital.