“If I told you how bad it was, you’d have offered. And then you’d have known that I asked you to move here for the money. And I didn’t — Mom, I didn’t, not at the start. In 2022 I meant it. And then things got bad and by the time I noticed it had turned into the other thing I couldn’t say it out loud, so I just — let it keep being the first thing.”
And I believe him. That’s the part that has cost me the most sleep.
I believe my son asked me to come live with him in 2022 because he loved me and didn’t want me alone in that apartment.
And I believe that somewhere in 2024, with a credit line and a demand letter and two kids in private swim lessons, he quietly started depending on me in a way he was too ashamed to describe, and that Rebecca did the arithmetic out loud and he let her, and then one of them typed eighteen fifty on a form.
