My stepmother called at 11:47 p.m. on the first night in the beach house I bought with my own money and told me she and my father were moving in the next day, that they were taking the master suite, that her daughter would get the best ocean-view room

I showed the driver the rooms Vanessa had assigned themselves because fighting over bags in a foyer would have given her what she wanted most: a scene she could translate later. I let Khloe gasp over the ocean-view bedroom on the second floor and instruct the housekeeper I did not have about where she liked her chargers placed. I let Vanessa sweep into the master suite and stand in the doorway with proprietary satisfaction, touching the carved edge of the dresser like a woman appraising inheritance.

“This feels right,” she said over her shoulder. “Daniel, don’t you think?”

My father looked at me.

It was the kind of look that lasts less than a second and says too much for anyone else in the room to interpret: I know. I’m sorry. Not yet. All of that, compressed.

“It’s a lovely room,” he said carefully.

Vanessa took that as agreement.