Despite these words, his tone didn’t change at all. He was using the same syrupy-sweet voice as he had at our first dinner, when William had screeched at the table. The heat of the room became suddenly painfully apparent to me. It was probably eighty degrees outside, full humidity, and we were sitting in a sauna.

“I don’t want you to take this personally. I’m sure you’re perfectly capable of doing your job and would be an excellent fit with another sort of mother.”

He couldn’t have twisted the knife into a more delicate spot.

“Another sort of mother?”

“You don’t understand my daughter.”

I felt sick. I understood that all the money really came from this man, that Lonnie was not the one who wielded any power in the family.

“I think I know her pretty well at this point,” I said, my voice not nearly as calm as his, though I was trying my best to control it. “I consider her a friend.”

“You see,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s exactly the problem. She doesn’t need a friend. She needs someone to take charge—someone to teach her how to be a mother. My daughter is a clumsy, spiteful, directionless embarrassment. She’s spent her whole life trying to make men love her. She doesn’t have the faintest idea how to do anything else. I gave her every opportunity—every single thing she’s ever shown any interest in, I’ve encouraged. I never pushed her in any direction she didn’t want to go. But all she did was flit from interest to interest, from person to person. She has a weak character, no self-control, no discipline. She can’t see anything through.”

My body was tense, ready to argue, but everything he was saying was true. And I hated her for all of it, but, also, he’d left out the part where she’d made me love her. I didn’t understand what any of this had to do with me or my job, regardless of its veracity. I was about to blurt out as much when he said, “And you.” His eyes met mine, unblinking. I wanted to look away but I didn’t let myself. “You came here from some little nowhere town—and what do you think? You think you can somehow understand where she came from? You think she deserves empathy? Losing her mother so young, you think, that must’ve been hard—it must’ve had an impact. You’re too nice to really see her.

“Are you close with your mother, Ella?”