The Ashford Arithmetic

I wrote a novel about a woman who can put a price on anything except the people she keeps. It begins at a birthday party: Mara Ashford’s father arrives with the other daughter, and before the band finishes its first set, a Sèvres cup is broken on the floor. Mara doesn’t cry. She counts. She has spent her life turning fathers, lovers, half-sisters, and silent painters into entries in a ledger. But some things won’t balance—a name on a building, a voice that never speaks, a crown in a drawer. This is not a love story. It is an accounting. And Mara Ashford intends to collect.