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

At the time, the reason had seemed vague even to me. My father had mentioned in passing that Vanessa was “simplifying some things.” Then a county notice misdelivered to my old San Diego condo caught my eye because the signature line on a scanned copy, which my father forwarded absentmindedly while asking whether I knew why county notices looked different now, didn’t sit right. It looked like his name written by someone trying too hard not to imitate his own. Adrien had glanced at it and said, “Maybe nothing, maybe very much something, but without context we’d be burning money to speculate.”

Now there was context.

“I want the Del Mar deed file,” I said. “The full pull. The one you warned me about.”

Adrien’s tone changed immediately. “What happened?”

“She lied to my father about this house. He thought he was visiting. She thought she was moving in. If she’s been running different stories in my direction and his, I want every piece of paper she’s touched since his cardiac rehab.”