My mother’s panic on that second phone call was real, because the rent she was asking about was not hers to worry over alone. For six years I had quietly covered the lease on my parents’ condo, wiring two thoussix hundred dollars on the first of every month while they told their friends they were “comfortable in retirement.” No one at the sunset cruise knew that. My siblings certainly didn’t. They believed our parents lived on savings and good fortune, when in truth the good fortune had my name on it and left my account every thirty days like clockwork.

So when my mother called that afternoon, breathless, saying the landlord had sent a notice and had I forgotten the transfer, I felt the cold in my chest settle into something clear and final. I did not shout. I did not remind her of Cancún. I simply repeated the four words my father had handed me two weeks before I was supposed to fly out to meet them. Only for family, remember? Then I hung up, opened my banking app, and canceled the recurring payment I had been making since before Trevor’s youngest was even born.