The Mistress Was Her Sister

My name is Hannah Marlowe. I'm twenty-two, a senior at Rice, finance major, living at home this semester to save on rent.

My mom's name is Susan. Forty-seven, full-time wife, the kind my dad has been calling a *bookkeeper's wife* lately, like the title is a slur and not a job description he watched her do for him for two decades.

My dad's name is Greg Marlowe. Fifty-two, founder and CEO of Marlowe Building Supply — concrete and drywall and framing lumber out of a warehouse off Beltway 8. He thinks of himself as a self-made man. The S-corp's first $400K of paid-in capital came out of my mom's savings and a wedding gift from her parents. The first round of contractor accounts came through her father's hunting buddies in East Texas.

He's grown out of needing any of that, the way he tells it.

First he stopped coming home for dinner. Then he stopped coming home to sleep. Then he stopped coming home, period.