“Where is the money, Maya?” I asked, as gently as I could.

Her hands began to tremble.

“I gave it to Grandma.” I closed my eyes.

“All of it?” “Yes.” “Why, sweetheart?” “Because,” she said, “she told me your company was going under.

That you needed help, to keep from losing everything.

She said you needed the money more than I did.” Nausea surged up through my stomach.

My eighteen-hundred-dollar laptop fund, which my mother had told me Maya squandered on herself, had been handed over by my frightened daughter to the grandmother who told her that her father was going bankrupt.

I knelt down, slowly, until I was at eye level with my child.