Money’s probably a little tight on your end.
I heard the whole structure underneath it. Ivy had told him. My parents had reinforced it. They had built an entire version of my life in which I was to be pitied, managed, quietly subsidized, and corrected if I threatened the aesthetic.
“You offered to pay thirty thousand dollars on my behalf,” I said.
He grinned. “It’s just money.”
No. It was status. It was hierarchy. It was his way of placing himself above me in my own family while pretending to be benevolent about it.
I looked at him and realized with perfect calm that this man had not merely underestimated me. He had mistaken my restraint for weakness.
