Every time the folder drifted toward me and the phones came up and the sister-in-law made her joke, something was being said about what I was to these people, and it was not daughter, and it was not family, and it was not even friend.

I was a function.

I was the mechanism by which they got to eat lobster without paying for lobster, and a mechanism is a thing you use, not a person you love, and you can use a thing warmly, you can use it with laughter and affection and a cute little nickname, and it is still use.

The money was never the wound.

The money was only the proof of the wound, the receipt that recorded, in dollars, exactly how little I was worth to them as anything other than the open wallet at the end of the table.