That is the cruel genius of conditional love, and the reason it is so hard to detect: while the condition has not yet been met, it is indistinguishable from the real thing.

The homework help was real.

The concert attendance was real.

The remembered dessert preference was real.

Every visible act was genuine.

Only the thing underneath them was false — the thing you cannot see, the intention, the plan, the private accounting in which my daughter was not a person to be loved but a cost to be endured until the endurance paid off.

And you cannot detect an intention by observing behavior, when the behavior is designed to conceal the intention.