The Vance farm sat on two hundred and eleven acres just outside town, all fields and fencing and a white farmhouse with green shutters my mother painted every seven years because she said weather respected attention. We were not rich, despite the way Robert liked to talk. Land-rich, yes. Cash-rich, never. The county loved to pretend my father was some kind of local titan, but titans don’t usually argue over diesel prices or patch combine tires themselves on a Sunday. What Robert really had was influence and performance. He knew how to look like the center of things. That mattered more to him than money, maybe even more than truth.
I learned early that love in our family moved through channels he approved.
Ashley, younger by seven years, warm-faced and pretty and instinctively adaptable, could charm him even when she disappointed him. She knew when to tilt her head, when to laugh, when to cry without quite smudging her mascara. She understood attention as a language and spoke it fluently.