Chelsea was thirty-three.

She had spent the last three years, and four brutal rounds of IVF, desperately trying to produce what my mother had publicly, repeatedly, giddily branded “the first Renner grandbaby.”

My mother had personally financed two of those rounds.

She announced her contribution at Easter dinner the way a corporation announces a NASCAR sponsorship.

And my mother’s money never arrived without a choke-chain attached.

She kept a running, vocal countdown at Sunday dinners.