That evening, Nestor emailed a still image from the footage while the insurance company processed my request for the full recording. It showed Sailor standing beneath the alarm station, her hand on the handle, and through the glass partition behind her, Gage watching calmly from across the room.

I saved it immediately.

Then I opened another spreadsheet. This one wasn’t about the party. It was about my family.

Over the past several years, I’d quietly financed far more of their lives than anyone acknowledged. Eighteen thousand dollars for Sailor’s Aspen winter academy.

Sixty-six hundred a year toward her private-school tuition. More than eight thousand for Mom’s meal-delivery service after her knee surgery — long after she’d recovered.

The total came to more than thirty-two thousand dollars. More than half my annual salary.