Next to line two, I wrote six o’clock PM on December twenty-fourth, the moment Caroline locked Lucy inside the dining room pantry behind the brass latch.

Next to line three, I wrote eight o’clock AM on December twenty-fifth, the moment I logged into my credit union account to cancel the recurring nine-hundred-forty-dollar mortgage transfer.

I kept going down the lined page, matching every retaliatory phone call, group text blast, and legal threat to the exact date and hour I stopped paying my mother’s mortgage.

By the time I finished line twelve, every dollar I had cut off lined up with a specific action taken by my mother or my sister within forty-eight hours of the notice.

“They think you’re going to walk into the district review in tears, begging for mercy,” Evan said.