In the hallway, my father finally explained why he had acted so strangely that afternoon. For three months, Priya’s questions about our family had never really been innocent curiosity. She kept steering conversations toward money, our home, our cars, and what my parents did. My father, who spent his career negotiating and reading people, noticed the pattern in the messages I casually forwarded him. So he decided to test her. He borrowed my uncle’s dying minivan, dressed in ripped jeans, packed my belongings into garbage bags, and arrived looking like a family with almost nothing.

The answer came almost immediately. Priya’s mother gave a tight smile, her father hesitated before shaking mine, and Priya herself suddenly became uncomfortable. The warmth she had shown for months disappeared. She barely spoke to my parents after realizing they were supposedly poor. I stood there, mortified, wishing the afternoon would end. Then my father calmly continued smiling, because he had not brought us there to embarrass me. He had come to find out something important about the person I was living with—and now he knew exactly what she was.