“Are you out of your mind? You want my mother to p…

“I’m asking her to pay for her own things.”

“She’s family, Claire. She’s my mother.”

“She’s a sixty-three-year-old woman with a pension and a savings account,” I said. “She can afford French cheese.”

Daniel’s jaw tightened.

He looked at his mother, then back at me. In that look, I saw everything I needed to see: the calculation, the loyalty, the old familiar hierarchy in which I would always come last. “This is embarrassing,” he said, low and sharp.

“You’re embarrassing all of us.”

I looked at him for a moment. I felt very calm. In fact, I felt calmer than I had felt in months, maybe years, and the clarity of it was almost startling, like stepping out of a stuffy room into cold air.

“All right, sweetheart,” I said quietly. “Get ready. The real surprise is coming.”

He did not know what I meant.