Nine hundred dollars spent on a graphics card while the water bill notice lay past due on the hallway floor.

And a quitclaim deed signed behind my back two years earlier.

My whole adult life, I’d believed that if I paid enough bills, worked enough extra shifts and protected the house, my mother would finally see me as a daughter worth keeping.

She hadn’t seen a daughter at all.

She’d seen a payroll account.

I pulled my new cell phone out of my coat pocket.

The screen was blank, free of family group chats and text notifications.