When I withdrew it, they did not lose anything that had ever belonged to them.

They only lost the illusion that it had.

Chapter 18 — No, Mom. I Can’t Afford It

The realignment was brutal for all of them, but it was Jason I watched most closely, because Jason was the father of my children and I needed to know what he would become.

And a strange thing happened to Jason, in the wreckage.

Some weeks after the dust had settled, Evelyn came to him, as she had come to him a thousand times across his whole life, and demanded money for an upcoming weekend trip — a request that had never once, in forty years, been refused.