“Your mother is gone. Tears won’t bring her back—so wipe your face, make dinner, and don’t look like a grieving child when my guests arrive.” That was what my husband said.

Jessica looked at me with pleading eyes, but I turned away. She had to feel what it was like to have nothing. Just as she had tried to trample on my dignity earlier, Mark and Jessica were pushed out the front door, stumbling onto the front yard. The sky, which had been holding back, finally broke. The rain began to pour down in sheets. Not a drizzle, but a deluge that soaked them in an instant. The rainwater mixed with Mark’s tears. He got up, drenched. His hair, once neatly styled, now hung limply over his forehead. He ran back to the porch, banging on the glass door that the bodyguards had locked from the inside.