The message from my general counsel was two lines. “Hold confirmed. Review frozen. But you should know, Rourke Development is more exposed than you realized. They cannot make payroll past next month without this extension. How do you want to proceed?” I read it twice, standing in that pantry in a dead woman’s apron, listening to Camilla explain to her friends how young women needed discipline. For six months I had known Rourke Development was refinancing. What I had not known, until that exact moment, was that my husband’s family was not merely inconvenienced by a delay. They were finished without it.

I untied the apron slowly and folded it over my arm. Then I walked out of the pantry and into the sitting room where Camilla held court, three friends arranged around her like an audience, Nathaniel leaning in the doorway with a drink. The laughter stopped when I appeared. Camilla opened her mouth to give me another instruction. I set the folded apron on the coffee table in front of all of them, took out my phone, and said, in the calmest voice I owned, “Before dinner, there’s a call I need to make. It concerns Rourke Development. I think everyone in this room should hear it.”