By the time dessert was served, my sister had already spent the evening trying to turn me into a joke.

The dinner was being held at the lakefront estate of Adrian Wexler, a technology investor whose name appeared in business magazines often enough that people lowered their voices when saying it, as though money might overhear. My brother-in-law worked for one of Wexler’s companies, and once a year Adrian hosted a private charity dinner for senior staff, selected guests, and their families. It was all polished silver, candlelight, and white-gloved servers moving through a dining room bigger than my first apartment.

My sister, Melanie, adored rooms like that.

She wore a bronze silk dress and the kind of smile that was always closest to her face when someone else was uncomfortable. For most of our lives, she had treated my food allergy as a personality flaw. Not because she didn’t understand it, but because she understood it perfectly and resented any fact that forced a room to accommodate me. Pecans could send me into anaphylaxis. Everyone in my family knew that. Melanie knew it best because when we were teenagers, she once waved pralines under my nose and laughed when I jerked back.

She called me dramatic then.

She still did now.

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