Standing there, I began, for the first time in seven years, to add it up.

I had never kept a tally, because I’d believed, foolishly and completely, that keeping a tally was not what family did.

But it all came back to me at once, itemized, as though some cold clerk in my head had been keeping the books all along and only now turned them face-up.

When Brandon’s brother Lucas got married, I had taken thirty-five thousand dollars out of my own savings to pay for the wedding and put down the deposit on their condo.

When his mother, Susan, needed a knee replacement, I had taken three weeks of unpaid leave to nurse her through the recovery, changing her dressings, driving her to appointments, sleeping in a chair.