It was the floor.
You cannot negotiate your way back into a family that has decided you are a wallet.
But you can, it turns out, stop funding the delusion.
And I had, that very night, been handed the exact tool to do it — though it took me until the small hours to realize I was holding it.
Chapter 6 — Every Booking, One Name
I did not cry, which surprised me.
Instead, I opened my laptop.
I spent that whole night going through the reservations — every confirmation, every receipt, every upgrade, every excursion voucher.
And as I read, a fact I had known all along but never once considered began to glow in the dark like something switched on.
Every single booking had one name attached to it.