Manuel had meant to save his son.

What he had actually done was teach his son that he never needed to save himself, and a person who never learns to save himself becomes, in time, exactly the kind of person Veronica could use: a man so accustomed to being rescued that he would let his own parents be robbed rather than face his own debts.

This is the cruel paradox at the heart of enabling, and it is why enabling is so often the disguise that a failure of love wears, precisely because it looks so much like love’s fullest expression.

The parent who always rescues believes they are protecting their child.