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My mother looked toward my father.

“How much?”

“Enough,” he said.

She drew the robe tighter around herself and stepped into the room, closing the door behind her even though we were the only ones in the house.

“Then we must be very careful.”

There it was, the family motto spoken in Patricia Ellsworth’s gentlest voice. Careful and always thinking of ourselves, rather than honest or brave.

“This cannot become gossip,” she said. “If the dinner is canceled now, people will talk.”

“People are going to talk anyway,” I said.

“Only if we give them something to say.”

“Mother.”

She looked at me with the expression that had once made me stand straighter in school photographs.

“You’re upset, and I understand that. Lorrie is a lovely girl, but she has always been overly emotional.”

“No.”

“Paul.” She frowned at me.

“No,” I said again, and the word was beginning to feel less strange in my mouth. “She’s angry because she should be angry. Don’t reduce it to temperament.”

My mother’s lips parted slightly as my father let out a humorless laugh.

“Listen to yourself. What do you hear?”

For once, I knew. “Someone who waited too long.”

I stood and looked down on my father knowing how much he hated to be seated while another man stood, even if it was his own son.

“I want every document tied to those transfers removed from my desk by morning and all accounts moved back to you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m not touching those accounts again.”

“You don’t dictate assignments at my firm.”

“I’m not dictating anything. I’m telling you what I won’t do.”

“You work for me.”

“I do. And if those accounts remain mine, I’ll tell Martin Vale and Royce Pierce, and then I’ll resign.”

My mother made a small sound as my father’s face went dark.

“You have no idea what you’re saying.”

“I know exactly what I’m saying.”

“Do you? Without the firm, what are you? A twenty-five-year-old man with a finance degree, no clients, and a girl who no longer wants him?”