Every setback he engineered became another line in his lawyer’s argument that I was failing.
He was manufacturing my poverty with one hand and pointing at it with the other.
And one night, my daughter found me at the kitchen table, surrounded by overdue bills, and asked, “Mom, are we going to be okay?”
I turned the papers over and smiled and said of course.
She climbed up beside me, looked at the envelopes, and said, “When I have lots of homework, I do the easiest one first. Maybe that works for bills.”
I almost cried into her hair.
I had no idea that my little girl had already started doing something far braver than the easiest thing first.
Chapter 3: The Birthday Shirt
Four months before the hearing, Lark’s birthday was coming, and money was tighter than it had ever been.
So I went to a pawn shop and sold my grandmother’s antique gold locket — the last valuable thing my family ever left me.
