By the time his daughter was born, my brother had maxed out three separate credit cards and buried himself and his family under a mountain of debt so high he could not see over the top of it.

And his wife knew absolutely nothing.

She was decorating a nursery on a foundation of debt she could not see, married to a man leaving every morning for a job that no longer existed, and she had no idea, because the person who was supposed to be facing all of it with her had decided, out of pride and fear and a terrible misguided tenderness, to face it alone in a coffee shop instead.

Chapter 12 — He Saw Another Bill