It was the first week of the month, and Mum had gone to our P.O. box in Providence to retrieve and cash the interest check from my trust fund. This was money left for my care by her father, and it galled her no end that she had no control over the principal, which would be mine when I turned eighteen. For a period of several years she actually contested his will, an Ahab-like quest that almost drove her mad. Mum's ever-changing, grandiose plans for that money made me glad she couldn't get at it, though the shopping binge would have been fun. As it was, we had just enough to live on three weeks out of the month and ran up debts in the fourth.

On that particular fourth week, we had been subsisting on pancake mix, basmati rice, and whatever I could forage from the ocean, so I was looking forward to unpacking a carload of groceries and all the magazines we subscribed to. After weeks of picking over old ones, new magazines were like fresh meat. But I knew something was wrong when I didn't hear her get out of the car. The engine stopped, and she just sat there, as if formulating another bogus tale-I knew at once she had blown the money, or been conned out of it. Something. My bird chest constricted, and my eyes swam with tears of frustration: Not again.

But when she finally came in, I could tell it was something else. Something new. There were no groceries, and I was determined to be indignant, but the look on her face gave me a feeling I thought I had long outgrown: childish fright-the fright that only comes from seeing adults fall apart.

Clinging for dear life to my petulance, I demanded, "What happened?"

"Honey?" Her look was dreamy, detached. Unbalanced. "Something weird is going on."

"What? Shut the door, it's freezing in here."

"Lulu…"

I avoided looking at her. "What?" I said. "What's wrong?"