The logic of empathy says ‘I feel your pain’ — but the logic of inheritance knows this transaction has always been corrupt at its core. The story I’m telling is not just something for you to feel sympathy for, rage against, or be educated by: it’s a story about you, too. This work has left a will, we are all of us named in it: the inheritances therein belong to every reader, every writer, every citizen. So, too, the world we get to make from it.