Some people do not love the people around them; they price them, and keep them for as long as the price seems favorable, and discard them when the numbers turn, and they call this whole cold ledger by the name of family because the word gives cover to the accounting.

My mother was one of those people.

Raymond had known it years before I did, and had built his entire quiet defense around the knowing, and had died with it confirmed.

I was only now, over his urn, catching up to what he had carried alone for so long.

Chapter 19 — His Recorded Message

“You did this,” my mother said, wheeling on me, her shock curdling into fury.