The Vanderbilt era was long past by 1978, and the eleven-year-old boy knew it, even if he didn’t know he knew it. People looked at him and his brother as heirs to an American dynasty, but the boy knew that such a thing didn’t exist and that no good could come from imagining that it did. He’d heard the stress in his father’s voice while he was talking over the phone to friends about Gloria’s spending, and his father had explained it to the boy as best he could. The boy wanted to be ready when the ship finally sank.
