“What if her good news has nothing to do with you?” the woman asked.

Spencer laughed again. “Everything ends up having to do with me.”

Abigail couldn’t breathe. She leaned against the wall to keep from going down. At sixty, she was learning that the son she’d given up so much for didn’t see her sacrifices as love.

He saw them as a bank account without a password.

A nurse came down the corridor with a thick folder in her arms. “Mrs. Riley? Aren’t you going in? Your son’s been asking for you.”

Abigail forced her mouth into a calm smile. “I left some documents in the car, honey. I’ll be right back.”

She walked to the elevator without looking back. Down in the parking garage she got into her old Ford sedan, took out the ticket, and checked the numbers one more time.

There was no mistake. She had enough money to buy houses, businesses, and comfort for generations.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. A text from Spencer: Where are you? You said you had good news.

She wrote back: Traffic’s bad. We’ll talk later.

Then she powered the phone off. For the first time in thirty-four years, she didn’t come running when her son called.

Instead of going back upstairs, she drove to her small house in the Pinecrest neighborhood. She set the ticket on the wooden table where she’d once counted coins to pay Spencer’s debts, and she looked at it for a long time.