I reserved a climate-controlled unit and arranged for 24-hour access. By sunrise, I had already packed the first of many boxes. Photo albums, baby books, kindergarten drawings, birthday cards with shaky handwriting, all of it.

Decades of memories, kept like treasures. Because that’s what mothers do. But I wasn’t just a mother anymore.

I was something else now. As I loaded the boxes into my trunk, my phone rang. Michael.

Mom, where did you go yesterday? Cassie was looking for you. The lie came easily. I wasn’t feeling well.

The drive, the heat, I didn’t want to ruin her day. He sounded relieved. Maybe because he wouldn’t have to explain my absence to Cassie.

She wanted to thank you for the blanket, he added, said it was really nice. I’m glad she liked it, I said my voice soft, neutral. Listen, mom, what Cassie said about Patricia, she didn’t mean it like that.

Of course, I replied. People say things. And sometimes, I thought, those things are exactly what they mean.

That conversation was the final seal. The moment I knew there was no going back not to who I had been, not to what they thought I would always be. Tomorrow, I would begin my plan.

Because I had finally learned what they had always known. That love without respect isn’t love. It’s servitude.

And I was done serving. It’s exactly one week after the baby shower the first package arrived at Cassie’s doorstep, so I’d sure it required a signature delivered at 9 a.m., just early enough to disrupt their morning, but not early enough to be called rude. Inside was a single leather-bound binder.

On the front, embossed in gold financial records Cassandra Reynolds, 2015 to 2023. There was no note, no explanation. Just eight years’ worth of bank statements, receipts, loan agreements.

Meticulously organized. Every dollar I’d lent her. Every bill I’d covered.

Every last-minute rescue mission I quietly handled. The total. $157,482.

That afternoon as I trimmed my rosebushes and Churchill dozed in a sunbeam, my phone rang. Cassie. Her voice came through shrill and sharp.

What the hell is this? Hello, Cassandra, I said, calmly. I assume you received my gift. Gift? You call this a gift? It’s a list of every penny you’ve ever spent on me.

What are you trying to prove? I snipped a wilted bloom, watching it fall. I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m simply organizing my affairs.

Oh, you want me to pay you back now? Is that it? Are you trying to guilt me over what Patricia said? I almost laughed. You’re the one who stood in front of a room and said she was the mother you wished had raised you. I reminded her.

The only grandmother your child would ever know. There was silence. You know I didn’t mean it like that, she said, voice brittle.