“And then you’d have learned that forging my signature works.”

“I’m your son. You’re supposed to protect me.”

“I’m protecting you from becoming something much worse,” she said.

When he asked for cash — for rent, for the shop, for credit cards — she repeated the same line every time. “Your medical treatment is covered. Your bad decisions are not.”

That sentence became the fixed border of her life.

On the day he was discharged, Spencer expected to be driven back to the luxury apartment where he was three months behind on rent. Abigail met him in the hospital parking lot with a bag of plain clothes and a written list.