When I arrived, I parked the Volvo in the drive that arced in front of the house. The building was a massive postmodern concrete box, completely out of place next to the more subtle Prairie Style buildings around it. Money clearly did not buy taste.

I walked to the front door. It was opened before I could knock. I glanced up. Dour gray eyes looked down at me from nearly seven feet of skinny white guy. “Ms. Merit.”

“Hello, Peabody.”

“Pennebaker.”

“That’s what I said.” Of course I knew his name. Pennebaker, the butler, was my father’s first big purchase. Pennebaker had a “spare the rod” mentality about child rearing and always took my father’s side—snooping, tattling, and generally sparing no details about what he imagined was my rebellious childhood. Realistically, I was probably lower than average in the rebellion department, but I had perfect siblings—my older sister, Charlotte, now married to a heart surgeon and pumping out children, and my older brother, Robert, who was being groomed to take over the family business. As a single twenty-seven-year-old graduate student, even though studying at one of the best universities in the country, I was a second-class Merit. And now I was coming home with a big ol’ nasty.

I walked inside, feeling the woosh of air on my back as Pennebaker shut the door firmly behind me and then stepped in front of me.

“Your parents are in the front parlor,” he intoned. “You are expected. They’ve been unduly concerned about your welfare. You worry your father with these”—he looked down disdainfully—“things you get involved in.”

I took offense to that, but opted not to correct his misunderstanding of the degree to which I’d consented to being changed. He wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

I walked past him, following the hallway to the front parlor and pushing open the room’s top-hinged door. My mother, Meredith Merit, rose from one of the room’s severe boxy sofas. Even at eleven p.m., she wore heels and a linen dress, a strand of pearls around her neck. Her blond hair was perfectly coiffed, her eyes pale green.