"Consuela has breakfast ready."

The girls went one way down the hall and Scott the other. He entered the "master suite" of the two-bedroom, fifteen-hundred-square-foot cottage. The master closet in his former residence dwarfed the small bedroom and adjoining bath. Scott undressed in the bathroom, stepped into the cramped shower, and stood under the hot water. The mansion and material possessions that had once given his life value were gone. His ambitious years, that period in a man's life when human nature and testosterone drive him to prove his net worth to the world-when the score is kept in dollars and cents-were over. For most men, the ambitious years extend well into their fifties, even their sixties, and come to an end only with a heart attack or a positive prostate exam, when a man confronts his mortality. But it wasn't the prospect of his own death that had brought his ambitious years to a premature end for A. Scott Fenney, at age thirty-six; it was the death of a U.S. senator's son.

He got out of the shower, shaved, and dressed in a $2,000 custom-made suit; the suits and Consuela were all that remained of his past life. She was part of the family, and the suits still fit. And he was still a lawyer.

Scott returned to the kitchen where the girls were eating breakfast tacos and playing with Maria.

"Last day of school, girls." Scott sat and ate his taco and studied his adopted daughter's face. "Pajamae, are you wearing makeup?"

"Blush, Mr. Fenney, like Beyonce. You like it?"

"What's a Beyonce? And please call me 'Dad.' It's been a year and a half."

"Don't seem right, Mr. Fenney."