Because it was so ordinary.

There was no urgency in it, no doubt that I would comply, no awareness that anything might have changed.

My mother was simply sending the bill downhill, the way she always had, on the same day her favorite daughter and my husband were in a suite upstairs planning to ruin me.

Everyone in my family was so completely accustomed to my paying that no one had thought it might ever stop.

I typed back a single word.

Sure.