The silverware stopped moving when Delphine told the room I looked like a tired mid-level secretary who had wandered into the wrong mansion. She had arrived forty minutes late, talked down to the catering staff through the first course, and by the main she had decided I was living in my own house like a charity case while her mother ran it. When I asked her to mind her manners, Yolanda came out of her chair with both hands on the polished table and told me I would not speak that way to a young woman of stature. Then she said the line. She is not your sister. Don’t tell her what to do.

My father looked at his plate and said nothing, and that silence was the loudest thing in the room. So I said fine, folded my napkin, nodded to our guests, and went upstairs to the desk by the windows. A vehicle agreement. A tuition account.