Or so she’d thought. Her success was what had started that last, desperate argument with her father. Stratton Rutledge had reared up, stomped his foot down and thrust his chin out, and laid out his rejection of her dreams—of her—in a final challenge.

Cara closed her eyes and shuddered, alone on the sofa, the whole scene coming back to her, vivid and real, even after nearly forty years. She brought the cashmere throw up around her shoulders as the memory played itself out.

She was just eighteen, and the family was sitting in the dining room, their favorite battleground. During family dinner conversations at the long, polished table, her mother had usually sat quietly, or moved silently from kitchen to dining room to serve. Only when asked a direct question did she participate in the debates that usually raged over some point no one could remember or even cared about. For Cara and her father, these arguments were all about firing shots and winning. For her mother and, to a lesser degree, Palmer, it was about dodging the bullets. They thought she was so strong. What they’d never understood was that, for Cara, firing back was a means of survival.

That evening, her father was drunk again. Her mother sat at the opposite end of the dining table, her eyes cast down at her plate as Cara and her father argued about her choice of college. Palmer was frozen across the table from her, begging her with his eyes to just be quiet, to go along and not cause trouble. But Cara had been accepted to Boston University, her dream college. Her number-one choice. She was not backing down.

“This is where I want to go,” she’d shouted back at him when he’d refused to send her. “I worked hard, real hard, for four years. I got straight As, glowing letters of recommendation. I earned this, Daddy.” She’d set her jaw, not knowing she was a mirror of her father. “I’m going!”

Stratton Rutledge, patriarch, favorite son, husband, father, the man who sat at the head of the table, planted his elbows on the gleaming wood and pointed his finger at the young female who dared challenge his authority.

“Who the hell do you think you are, little girl?” her father had roared. “You’ll do as I say. And if you step one foot out of this town—out of this house—that’ll tear it between us, you hear? You are not going north, and that’s final. I’ll not tolerate this arrogance. Especially not from some blunt-mouthed teenage girl who won’t act like the lady she’s been bred to be. You’re an embarrassment to your mama. And to me. Where do you think you’re going? Come back here! Caretta Rutledge! You leave and you’ll not get one dollar, not one stick of furniture, not so much as a nod of the head when you pass on the street with me, hear?”

If that had been the end of it, just another drunken episode, her life might have been different. But Cara had shown her independence. She’d risen from the table, glared at him, and, without another word, walked out of the dining room.