Three months earlier, my mother had sold my late father’s land.

Brandon had known about the sale but never the amount, and he had wanted the amount badly.

He had started warm — the helpful son-in-law, the investment advice — and when she wouldn’t hand it over, the warmth had curdled into pressure, and when the pressure failed, into a frame.

He had been certain, so certain, that I would do what I had always done: absorb the humiliation, take my mother quietly to a hotel, come home in tears, apologize for overreacting, and fold back into the shape he’d made for me.

It was not an unreasonable bet.