I knew—and Caroline knew—that since the investigation began, my status had slipped—or risen—from that of her husband and equal to that of a person she indulged. Gratitude and guilt played a part in this. I’d worked my ass off at the office for years while she puttered away in her sculpture studio. Then, three years ago, Caroline hit the jackpot, landing a piece in the Whitney Biennial. This led to more exhibits, one-person shows in several cities, including New York, and dozens of studio visits from thin, beautiful women and their sleek young husbands who smelled (like me, I suppose) of fresh cash, or from scrawny, perfumed old bats whose doddering mates brought to mind country houses and slobbering retrievers. Everything my wife had yet to sculpt for the next three years was already sold. We’d talked about my quitting, pursuing anthropology or social work like I’d always said I wanted to, or just relaxing, for Christ’s sake. But our overhead was so high: the house in Presidio Terrace, the girls in private school heading toward college, skating lessons, riding lessons, piano lessons, tennis camp in the summers—I wanted them to have all of it, all of it and more, for the rest of their lives. Even Caroline’s respectable income could not have begun to sustain it. Then let’s change, she’d said. Let’s scale back. But the idea filled me with dread; I wasn’t a sculptor, I wasn’t a painter, I wasn’t a person who made things. What I’d busted my chops all these years to create was precisely the life we led now. If we tossed that away, what would have been the point?

“Why don’t we wait in the first class lounge so the girls can sit down?” my wife suggested.

“We’re riding hard-seat,” I said. “It’s only eight hours.”

The girls looked aghast. I watched them cast baleful looks their mother’s way, and saw, in their silky, seamless faces, the thick patina so many years of privilege had left behind. Suddenly I was enraged—enraged at both of them for not knowing what these privileges had cost.

“You can wait in line with the rest of the world,” I said. “It won’t kill you.”

Crestfallen, they gazed at me—their father, who rarely let them ride a bus for fear of all the germs and scrofulous characters they might encounter.

The land got very strange. Gray hills bulged from the earth in such a way that their middles looked wider than their bases. “It’s like Dr. Seuss,” I overheard Kylie say. Caroline sketched in her notebook. I stared out the window at the weird hills and told myself that we lived in San Francisco, in a house on Washington Street that I’d bought for a million in cash six years ago, that our house existed right now, the burglar alarm on, automatic sprinklers set to keep the garden alive. It’s all still there, I thought. Waiting. But I didn’t believe it.