Not once. Twice. Then again, impatient and sharp, as if whoever was pressing it wanted the sound to feel like a command.
I set my mug down slowly. My hands were steady. That surprised me.
My name is Emily Carter. I’m twenty-six years old, and I work as an accountant for a mid-sized firm downtown. I’m the kind of person who triple-checks numbers, who keeps an emergency fund, who reads contracts before signing them, who believes in the quiet kind of security that doesn’t show off.
I learned those habits the hard way.
In my family, there have always been two categories of people.
