I swear to God, I never touched it.” And Brandon laughed — a short, ugly laugh that I felt in my teeth.

“Right,” he said.

“The hundred-dollar bills grew legs and walked out the door.” My mother tried to explain that she had dusted the office that morning, that she’d opened the drawer only to wipe the edges, that she’d never so much as counted what was inside — and he wasn’t listening, hadn’t been listening, because the money had never been the point.

He rolled straight from the accusation into a rant I’d half-heard building for weeks: that she made too much noise cooking in the mornings, that she used too much butter, that she kept the television on too late, that her presence in the apartment was suffocating him.