Not joy, exactly.

More a kind of grim confirmation, the closing of a case I’d been building in my own mind for six years without letting myself reach the verdict.

Every doubt I’d ever talked myself out of — every time I’d thought maybe I’m being unfair, maybe they do love me under all of it, maybe it’s me — was answered, finally, by the sound of a mother and son through a wall, tearing at each other the instant there was nothing left to divide.

Love doesn’t do that.

Love, even strained love, even failing love, pulls people together when the money’s gone, because the money was never the point.

What I heard through that wall was the sound of the point being exactly the money, and always having been, and I let myself hear it all the way to the end, because I needed to stop doubting, and this was the sound that finally let me.