“Save your congratulations,” Iris says, putting the book she is holding in her lap and wagging a nail at me. “Extend your condolences.”

I cannot contain my look of total shock, and I stumble over my words. “I...uh, don’t know what to say.”

“Your Sadie and I are not that different, it turns out,” Iris says. “I come from a well-to-do family in Chicago. My father was an attorney, and I wanted to follow in his footsteps. I went to college and law school, but when it came time for me to start work, my father demurred. He felt it was best I marry a man with whom I’d gone to law school, and whose father ran one of the biggest law firms in Chicago. It was an arranged marriage of sorts, you see, by both families so that their firms could merge. My family owned a lot of land in Illinois, and their family had a lot of land in Michigan. It was the ideal marriage on paper.”

She stops. “I finished top of my class, and let’s just say my husband wouldn’t have graduated had it not been for some familial influence.” A wry smile crosses her face. “There’s a lovely law library named after him.” She stops again. “I worked hard. There weren’t many women of my era graduating law school, much less top of their class. And I had so many offers. I admire people who work hard and dream big. My husband didn’t try at anything. He just expected people to fall at his feet. He knew that I saw through him, and so he spent his whole life trying to put me in my place.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to marry a man who was inferior to you in college, and then have him treat you not only as if you had no dreams of your own but also as an inferior for the rest of your life?” she continues.

“I think I do,” I say.

“My husband treated me like he did his associates and our staff,” Iris says. “As if we didn’t matter. And I put up with that for nearly my entire life. I could have divorced him, of course, but I got used to being comfortable in life. Like so many women of my era, the men controlled all of the money. My husband earned all the income and invested it without consulting me. Due to his influence, I worried I could never land a job if I left him. And my family’s wealth was passed along to my older brother to manage. He was just like my husband.” She stops, leans toward me and whispers, “I popped a bottle of Veuve when they both died. I felt like such a monster.” She leans back and says with a wink, “But that’s the wonderful thing about women. We’re survivors. We outlive the men.”