The notebook had dates, amounts, and little notes beside almost every request. I found my name on page after page, followed by numbers I recognized immediately — money I’d sent her, bills I’d paid, and loans I’d never asked to be repaid. Then I noticed something that made me stop. Beside each amount, she’d written a short description of what she’d told me to get it. “Needs help.” “Feeling guilty.” “Mention how much she sacrificed.” I turned the page, and there was a column labeled “Things that work.”
My hands started shaking when I saw the phrase I’d heard twice in my entire life: I don’t know what I’d do without you. It had a checkmark beside it. Underneath, she’d written the dates she used it and the amount I gave her afterward. There were other phrases too — things she’d said when she needed me to feel responsible for her. I sat on the bedroom floor reading it until I reached the final page. At the top, she’d written my name, followed by a sentence that wasn’t about money at all.
It said, “He thinks he is helping me, but I have spent years making sure he believes he has to.” Below it was a list of every time I’d refused to help, followed by what she’d done afterward to make me change my mind. I realized the pattern wasn’t in my imagination; she’d been documenting it herself. Then I found one final entry dated three months before she died: “If he ever finds this, I hope he understands that I needed him to stop.” For the first time, I wondered whether the notebook wasn’t a record of how to get money from me, but my mother’s attempt to leave me proof of what she’d done.
