“How can you talk to me like this?” I managed, barely able to breathe.

“I could die right now.”

“I know,” she said, and her voice did not rise at all.

“I also know that for seven years you never once gave me your salary.

You never asked how I paid for the groceries, or Dev’s school, or the gas, or the medicine.

Your mother took every dollar because you told me it was for our own good.