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She pressed her lips together.

I closed my eyes. “Wonderful.”

“Patricia knew there was family money,” my father said. “I doubt she knew the amounts.”

“But Alan did.”

“He had reason to know some of it.” His jaw tightened. “He shouldn’t have used that information.”

“He built a marriage around it.”

My mother touched the pearls at her throat. “We did not arrange your marriage.”

“No. You just made sure everyone knew how sensible it would be.”

Rain tapped against the kitchen windows.

My father pulled out a chair. “Sit down.”

“I don’t want to sit.”

“Then I will.”

He looked suddenly tired, and my anger slipped again as I stayed standing.

“Is there really a trust?”

“Yes.”

“And the money is mine?”

“Yes.”

“How does it work?”

“There are stages. Partial control when you marry, more at thirty, full control at thirty-five.”

I stared at him.

“So marriage mattered.”

My mother crossed her arms. “We were trying to protect you.”

“I know.”

That caught her off guard.

“I know you were,” I said more quietly. “That’s what makes me so angry. You actually thought this was the right thing to do.”

Tears burned my eyes.

I wiped them away before either of them could comment.

“I want to be furious with you,” I said. “I am furious with you. But I also keep looking at you and...”

I stopped.

My father’s hands had been thinner near the end. My mother’s rings had spun loosely around her fingers. There had been hospital rooms and flowers and sympathy notes and the awful business of deciding what happened to someone’s belongings after they were gone.