So when I arrived at Mrs. Hampton’s office that Thursday afternoon, I wasn’t nervous.
Her office was exactly what you would expect from a woman who had spent decades managing the financial afterlives of very rich Texans. Mahogany walls. Law books no one touched casually. Heavy drapes framing windows that overlooked a carefully landscaped courtyard. Art selected to imply taste without distraction. Every object in the room suggesting discretion, permanence, and the fact that money likes to be handled by people who do not appear emotionally impressed by it.
Margaret Hampton herself was in her early sixties, silver-haired, measured, and impossible to imagine being flustered by anything short of structural collapse.
“Victoria,” she said as we sat. “Thank you for coming on short notice.”
“Of course.”
She folded her hands once on the desk, then opened a file.
“I asked you here because your twenty-fifth birthday triggered a distribution milestone in a trust established by your great-grandmother, Lillian Bellmont.”
I remember blinking.
Then sitting a little straighter.
Then wondering, absurdly, whether I had forgotten some ceremonial family account everyone else knew about but I didn’t.