“Single moms belong in the gutter!”

The penthouse on Fifth Avenue didn't have limestone fountains or string quartets.

It had twelve-foot ceilings of oiled oak, three thousand square feet of unpolished slate floor that had been salvaged from an eighteenth-century mill in Vermont, and windows that looked out over the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir through eighty feet of triple-paned acoustic glass that kept the city below sounding like a muted radio in the next room.

At eight o'clock on Sunday morning, the kitchen smelled of dark roast coffee, scorched butter, and the vanilla extract Mrs. Gable had used for the waffle batter.

Lily was sitting at the low breakfast counter wearing an oversized pair of flannel pajamas that had belonged to her cousin, her hair dry and fluffy again, watching a line of three small ceramic sheep she had arranged across the marble.

My phone—the new one Miller had brought to the apartment at midnight, already cloned with my old contacts and SIM profile—lay beside my orange juice.

It had begun vibrating at six-fifteen.

The first forty calls were from my mother.

She hadn't left a voicemail until seven-thirty. When I tapped the speaker button, her voice filled the high-ceilinged kitchen, thin, rapid, and pitched half an octave above her normal social register.

“Nora? Nora, darling, please pick up. We’re... your father and I are still at the hotel in Tarrytown. There’s been some sort of terrible administrative error with the car service, and Mark... well, Mark is very confused about some phone calls he received during the night. We had no idea, Nora. You never told us about Adrian. You know how your father gets when he’s had a long day—he was only trying to protect your sister’s moment. Family is family, darling. Call me as soon as you get this. We’re having brunch at the club at eleven.”

I deleted the message.

The second call was from Chloe.

Her voicemail was three minutes long. The first half was mostly sobbing, punctuated by the sound of hotel room doors slamming and what sounded like Mark Kessler shouting at someone about an escrow account in the background.

“Nora, you have to tell him to stop!” Chloe wailed, her voice cracking into that raw, ugly screech she had had since she was eight years old and didn't get the pony she wanted for her birthday. “Mark’s bank froze our credit cards! The hotel won't let us check out until the master bill is settled, and they’re saying the deposit didn't clear! The manager came to our room with two security guards, Nora! On my wedding night! Mark says his company is going to be in the Wall Street Journal tomorrow morning! Do you know what people are saying on Instagram? Someone posted a video of the fountain! You have to fix this! He’s your husband!”

I deleted that one, too.

Adrian walked into the kitchen wearing a gray cashmere sweater and dark trousers, his hair still damp from the shower. He looked rested, his eyes clear and sharp, carrying a leather-bound folio under his arm.

He set the folio on the counter beside my plate, leaned down, and kissed the top of my head, then reached over and took a piece of bacon from Lily’s plate.

“Hey,” Lily said, frowning at him. “That’s my pig.”

“Tax,” Adrian said smoothly. “The government takes ten percent of all cured meats.”

“You’re not the government.”

“I’m the house government,” he replied, sitting on the stool beside mine and opening the folio. “Which is much more strict about breakfast.”

He turned the page toward me.

It was a single sheet of heavy legal vellum from the firm of Vance, Sterling & Aris, bearing the blue stamp of the New York State Supreme Court for Westchester County.

“What is this?” I asked.

“A preliminary protective order,” Adrian said, taking a sip from my coffee mug. “It restricts Richard and Diane Bennett from approaching within five hundred yards of you, Lily, or this building for eighteen months. It also names the estate in Bedford and your sister’s apartment on East Seventy-Second.”

I looked at the document. “On what grounds?”

“Third-degree assault on a minor,” he said, his voice entirely flat. “And reckless endangerment. The video from the pavilion’s security cameras was delivered to the district attorney’s office in White Plains at three this morning. The county prosecutor watched your father shove a four-year-old child into three feet of water from a height of twenty inches. He signed the warrant four minutes later.”

I stared at the black ink.

For five years, I had lived in fear of their phone calls. I had spent half a decade changing my email address, screening my mail through a commercial box in Midtown, and telling my friends that my parents were retired in Florida just so I wouldn't have to explain why they never came to Lily’s preschool plays.

I had thought that staying small was the only way to keep them from eating whatever I built.

“Is he going to jail?” I asked.

“He was arrested twenty minutes ago in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton in White Plains,” Adrian said, turning the page. “They took him out through the side entrance so the guests wouldn't see the handcuffs, but Miller made sure two photographers from the Post were standing by the valet stand.”

I looked at Lily, who was currently trying to teach one of her ceramic sheep how to drink orange juice through a paper straw.

“And Mark?”