Chapter 9 — The Accordion Folder

The next morning she arrived at my door carrying a thick brown accordion folder, the kind that expands into pleated compartments, stuffed past its capacity.

She set it on my kitchen table and began to lay the papers out, and as she did, as the documents spread across the wood, the situation revealed itself to be far worse than I had feared, and I had feared a great deal.

Gavin had not merely been tightening the reins on my mother’s monthly spending, controlling her the way I had assumed, penny by penny and errand by errand.