blinked red by the front door, I sat on the screened porch and opened twelve years of bank records.
I found the $2,800 I had wired Keaton when his truck was about to be repossessed.
The $5,000 I gave my parents during the pandemic because my father claimed his hours had been cut, though I later found photos of them in Key West from the same month.
The $1,300 I spent on my mother’s sixtieth birthday dinner, after which she told people the restaurant had been “a little low-class, but Arden tried.”
The total came to $26,740.
Documented.
Not guessed. Not emotional math. Actual transfers, checks, receipts.
I stared at the number until the porch lights clicked on.
For years, I had thought I was helping.
Now I understood I had been training them.
Every yes had taught them to expect another one.
Every swallowed insult
had taught them my silence meant permission.
