I want to be clear about that, because people expect me to have, and I did not.

There was no pleasure in it, only a strange, sober clarity about what had actually been holding everything up.

For years, my family had lived a life that appeared self-sustaining, that they experienced as self-sustaining, that they took full credit for.

My mother ran her household; Karla owned her condo; my father took his medication; and each of them believed, genuinely, that they were managing their own lives through their own efforts.

And it had all been an illusion, an elaborate performance of independence funded entirely, invisibly, by me.