I met Avery at Smith College, where she was the quintessential good student and I had a reputation as a wild child. It was easier to explain how I didn’t know about a universal family tradition because I had been stuck in an Austrian boarding school. Easier to act unaffected by the infamy of my dysfunctional trust fund by pretending to obsess over parties and frat boys and reckless stunts.
It would be easier to really be as self-absorbed as people thought I was, but I felt every whisper, every criticism, every cruel smile directed at me as if my skin were made of paper.
I pull my leased BMW into the wide circular drive as the electronic gates swing open. Around back there’s an eight-car garage with empty bays for Rolls-Royces and Aston Martins, the kind of cars befitting a house like thi
