At my sister’s wedding reception, my mother demanded I sign over the penthouse my grandmother left me—and when I refused, she slapped me in front of half of Boston. She thought that would finish me. Then my grandmother walked in with a lawyer.

I expected Eleanor to shake once the adrenaline wore off. She did not. She was running on something sharper than adrenaline, something that had likely been accumulating in her for months. In the car, as the city moved past the windows in wet ribbons of light and dark stone, she told me what had happened before the wedding. Three months earlier, my mother had visited her and asked not for the address of the penthouse, but for its legal description. Not the sort of question a sentimental mother asks when daydreaming about children’s futures. The legal description. Parcel details. Recording data. The language of transfer. Eleanor said that was when she understood the matter had moved beyond private entitlement and into preparation.

So she called Marcus.