I said, “Am I paying for you to live here or not?”

She sat down very slowly.

That scared me more than if she had denied it.

“Answer me.”

She looked up at me and whispered, “Not exactly.”

I actually laughed. “That is an insane phrase.”

She flinched.

I said, “Do you owe anything here?”

“No.”

She looked toward her knitting bag in the corner.

“Please open it.”

I stared at her for a second, then went to the bag and dumped it onto the bed.

Yarn spilled out. Needles. A scarf. Then folders. Bank statements. Deposit slips. Investment summaries. A sealed envelope with my name on it.

I looked at the numbers and felt sick.

Every check had been placed into a separate account. Every dollar tracked. Most of it invested. None of it spent.

I held up the papers. “What is this?”

Her voice broke. “It was the only way I knew you would keep coming.”

I just stood there.

She kept speaking because once she began, I think she understood there was no saving herself by stopping.

“After your father died, I told myself to be reasonable. You were grieving. You were overworked. You loved me. I knew that. But every month it got a little harder to get time with you. A shorter visit. A delayed call. Another promise for next week.”

“That happens in real life,” I snapped.

“I know.”

“People get busy.”

“I know.”

“You could have asked me to come more.”

That was when she said the thing that broke me.

“I wanted you to want to.”

She kept crying, but quietly. Linda had always cried as if she were apologizing for being inconvenient.

“I was ashamed,” she said. “I was lonely, and I was ashamed of it. I didn’t want to beg my daughter for time.”

My head snapped toward her. “Then don’t call it that. Don’t call me your daughter while tricking me into paying you to prove it.”

She closed her eyes like I had slapped her.

“You’re right,” she whispered.