My son had appointed himself my protector.

He had taken the anxieties that were mine to carry, the money and the future and the keeping of us afloat, and he had begun, quietly, to shoulder them alongside me, and then, when he judged that I could not manage, to shoulder them instead of me, in secret, so that I would not have to know he was doing it.

A ten-year-old is not built to carry that.

No child is.