The document was four pages, printed on plain white paper in a clean serif font that someone had chosen to suggest formality without the expense of a lawyer’s letterhead. I read it the way I had learned to read contracts, which is from the beginning and without rushing, because the important word is never in the place you expect it and the thing designed to hurt you is always dressed as something reasonable.
It was a loan repayment demand.
My parents had itemized, across four pages and what appeared to be several weeks of careful record-keeping, every financial contribution they claimed to have made to my life from the age of eighteen through twenty-six. Tuition assistance, listed by semester. A car they had helped purchase when I was twenty-two, long since sold. Groceries during the summer I had moved back briefly after a job fell through. A security deposit on my first apartment in Portland, which I had repaid in cash within fourteen months and for which I had a bank record they apparently did not know existed.
At the bottom of the final page, in bold, a total.
