For her to write one name, mine, and only mine, on a thing hidden this carefully for this long, meant that whatever was inside was not a gift to be divided.

It was a wrong to be set right, and it was mine, and she had known it belonged to me alone.

I understood that much before I read a word, and it frightened me, because it meant that somewhere in the fairness of my childhood there had been an unfairness so large my mother had spent her life trying to balance it in secret.

Chapter 4 — Grocery Money