My son froze my cards so I couldn’t even buy groceries. He thinks he controls our $42 million empire—but one call from the bank made me realize he has no idea what I’m about to do. First my credit card declined. Then my debit.

Karen was beautiful in a hard, expensive way. Not warm beauty. Not ease. She had the kind of face that photographs well at charity luncheons and in holiday cards staged beside professionally lit fireplaces. Her blond hair was always too perfect to be accidental. Her teeth looked as if they had been approved by a committee. When Desmond first brought her home, I had genuinely tried to like her. She was bright. Articulate. Impeccably dressed. She sent handwritten thank-you notes. She knew which fork to use at a formal dinner and how to flatter Warren without making it look like flattery. For a year or two I even believed she might be one of those women who appear a little polished until you get to know them, and then prove warm underneath. I was wrong. She was polished all the way through.

“Oh,” she said, making my name sound like something she had not ordered. “Nora. You usually call.”

“My cards have been declined,” I said. “The bank says my accounts were frozen this morning. I need to speak to Desmond.”

She leaned one shoulder against the doorframe and examined one fingernail as if deciding whether to be amused. “He blocked your number.”

The sentence was so casual it took me a second to comprehend it.

“He what?”

“He said it was time for boundaries.”

Boundaries. That word. God, how the selfish love therapeutic language. They wrap greed in vocabulary stolen from healing and expect the rest of us to applaud the sophistication.

Desmond came into the foyer behind her then, and for a second my heart did a terrible, hopeful thing because from a distance he still looked so much like his father that it could catch me unprepared. Same shoulders. Same dark hair, though trimmed in a more fashionable style than Warren ever tolerated. Same height. Same broad hands. But Warren had always carried warmth toward me in his face, even when he was angry. Desmond’s expression was flat and cold and already decided.

“Yeah,” he said. “I froze them.”

He did not look sorry. He did not look nervous. He looked inconvenienced by my arrival.

“We need to have a serious conversation about your spending, Mom,” he said. “Somebody has to protect the family assets.”

For one long beat, I heard nothing but a high-pitched rushing in my ears. Then the words landed one at a time and arranged themselves into meaning.

“Protect the family assets,” I repeated.