I bought my parents a $650,000 cottage by the ocean for their fortieth anniversary because I wanted them to finally know what peace felt like.

Daniel had that particular kind of confidence people mistake for competence when they first meet him. Good shoulders. Excellent teeth. Voice pitched exactly low enough to sound trustworthy. He could talk about “opportunity” for twenty minutes without ever attaching it to labor. He was always between big things. Real estate consulting, digital marketing, hospitality development, private investment outreach—his job titles shifted faster than weather and somehow always required somebody else’s capital, somebody else’s patience, or somebody else’s belief.