Steven lunged and caught my arm, both his hands around my sleeve, and his voice came apart entirely.

“Mom, please!

Please, you can’t do this!

Stephanie said she was going to pay it back, she promised she’d pay it all back — if you enforce this now, the bank freezes everything, my accounts, all of it, my reputation is finished, do you understand?

Everything I’ve built—”

I looked down at his two hands gripping my sleeve.

And I looked back up at his face, and I held his eyes, steadily, and said nothing at all, and under the weight of it his hands loosened, and fell away, and let me go.

“Your reputation,” I said.