The letter came on a Tuesday and Callum put his coffee down when I read the first line aloud. My father’s attorney needed my signature to preserve my father’s ownership interest in Thornfield Holdings. I laughed before I opened the attachment.

For three years they had described me as unstable and bitter and jealous of Rosalind, and my silence had been the evidence. It had built slowly, the way these things do. She would insult me and then cry, and my mother would ask why I always had to make everything difficult, and my father would tell me to be the bigger person. I saved five seats at my law school graduation and they went to a vineyard four states away because my sister was having a hard week. My mother told me that at thirty-two I did not need applause for every little achievement, and my father said marrying Callum proved I had started settling.