“She’s having a hard time getting on her feet,” my mother would say on the phone to her sister, in her concerned voice, while I sat ten feet away at the kitchen table, on a call with a client.

Dependent.

Struggling.

Helpless without them.

They said those words so often, to so many people, that after a while some part of me started to believe them. I’d catch myself apologizing for using the dryer. For taking a long shower. For eating the last yogurt.

I was paying them six hundred dollars a month, and I was apologizing for yogurt.

There was something else I need to tell you about.

My grandmother.

My mother’s mother. Her name was June Whitaker. She lived about forty minutes away, out in the country, in an old stone house on twenty acres behind an iron gate. My grandfather had built a fortune in commercial real estate before he died. My grandmother lived in that big house alone for twenty-five years after him, with a piano and a garden and a dog named Biscuit.

I only visited her twice as a child.

Once when I was five. Once when I was seven.

After that, my mother stopped speaking to her completely.

I never knew exactly why. When I asked, as a kid, my mother would say things like, Your grandmother is a difficult woman, or She made her choices, or We don’t need to talk about her.

When I was older, I tried to look her up. I sent a birthday card once, when I was sixteen, to the address I remembered. I never heard back. I assumed she didn’t want to hear from me.

My grandmother died a little over two years ago. I found out from a cousin, on Facebook, three weeks after the funeral.

Nobody told me.

My mother didn’t go.

I’ll tell you about the certified mail now, because I didn’t know about it then.

I didn’t know that a law firm called Mercer & Hale had been sending letters to my parents’ house, addressed to me, for eighteen months.

I didn’t know that my mother had signed for three of them.

I didn’t know any of it until Thursday night.

It started with my father wanting to see my bank account.

I’d turned twenty-eight two weeks earlier. My parents had been acting strange ever since. Asking odd questions. Whether I’d gotten any important mail. Whether I’d heard from anybody. Whether my bank had called me.

On Thursday night, after dinner, my father called me into his home office.

He was sitting behind his big wooden desk. My mother was standing next to the bookshelf with her arms crossed.

“Sit down, Leah,” my father said.

I sat.

“I’d like to see your banking activity,” he said. “For the last month. On your phone. Right now.”

I stared at him.

“Why?” I said.

“Because you live in my house,” he said. “And I have a right to know whether you’re being responsible with money.”

“I pay you six hundred dollars a month, Dad,” I said. “On time. Every month. You can see that on your own statement.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I’m twenty-eight,” I said. “I run my own business. My bank account is private.”

My mother made a little sound. A sigh. Like I was being difficult.

“Just show him, sweetheart,” she said. “There’s no reason to make this a big thing.”

“Then there’s no reason for him to see it,” I said.

My father leaned forward over his desk.

“Hand me your phone, Leah,” he said.

“No,” I said.

I’d never said that word to him in that tone before. Not once. Not in twenty-eight years.

His face changed.

He sat back in his chair. Very slowly. He looked at me for a long time.

Then he picked up his own phone from the desk and started typing.

“What are you doing?” I said.

He didn’t answer.