My sister put my two kids in her unheated garage the night before Christmas so they wouldn’t bother her guests, then told our dad on the phone, “They’re inside frosting cookies with the girls.”
I never phoned her.
I froze one debit card at 7:10 on Christmas morning, and by eight she was banging on my storm door.
I was eleven hours into a double at the distribution center while it happened, and I had no clue.
Kabir is eleven. Emilia is seven and still won’t walk past a dark doorway.
Their father, Rajesh, spends his holidays in Houston now.
So the plan was Dad.
Marlys from next door dropped them at Nicole’s curb on her way to the candlelight service, a little before six.
Dad was supposed to pull in right behind her.
His Buick quit on the interstate with the hazards blinking.
I got off at 6:30 and drove straight to his apartment.
Emilia was asleep on his couch under his work coat.
Kabir was up at the counter with his hands pulled inside his sleeves, the way he does when something is his fault and isn’t.
Dad looked like he’d aged a year since Thanksgiving.
“Ask him,” Dad said.
I crouched next to the stool.
“Aunt Nicole came to the door,” Kabir said.
“She said it was ADULTS ONLY tonight. Jarrod’s work people.”
“So where’d you go?”
“The garage. She said it had a heater.”
“Did it?”
“It was plugged in.”
That was all he’d give me on the heater.
Emilia had woken up.
She came over and pushed her face into my side, still in her church tights.
“They had a fire outside,” she said.
“On the patio. And tall lamps that were hot.”
“How do you know they were hot?”
“Uncle Jarrod’s friends were standing under them in short sleeves. I could see from the little garage window.”
She held up her hand to show me how little.
Kabir said they knocked on the inside door twice. Once around seven.
Once when Emilia had to pee.
Nobody came for the first one.
For the second, my niece opened it, walked Emilia to the half bath, and walked her back out.
My stomach went hard.
Dad cleared his throat.
“I called her at twenty after seven,” he said.
“From the shoulder. I asked her straight out were they in the house.”
“What’d she tell you?”
“She said they were in the kitchen frosting cookies with her girls. She said, ‘Dad, relax, they’re having a ball.'”
He rubbed his face with both hands.
“I ASKED HER, Tonya. Twice.”
The tow got him there at 9:40.
He found them on a stack of patio cushions, Kabir’s coat over Emilia’s legs.
Nearly four hours.
“You couldn’t have known,” I said.
He nodded like he didn’t believe me.
I gave the kids the rule again.
Anybody puts you somewhere cold, anybody tells you to wait out of sight, you phone me.
At work too. If my phone’s in the locker, still.
“What if you’re in the freezer section?” Kabir said, checking.
“There too.”
I took Dad’s other stool and opened my bank app, because something about that patio wouldn’t leave me alone.
Nicole had posted the party all week.
Catered, a bartender, Jarrod’s bonus paying for every bit of it, she told anybody who’d listen.
Eighteen months ago, when Mom went into memory care, Nicole and I opened an account for her extras.
Her hair appointments, her pharmacy copays, the cardigans she keeps losing.
I put in $1,200 every month.
Nicole lives twelve minutes from Mom, so Nicole holds the card.
The top line was a catering place in Ankeny. $2,140.
Under it, a party rental company. $410.
The memo said FOUR PATIO HEATERS.
I read it again with my son sitting right there in his sleeves.
Then I scrolled back. A spa. A steakhouse on her anniversary.
Two months of a car payment that wasn’t Mom’s, because Mom hasn’t driven since 2019.
I called the bank at 7:10 and froze the card.
I screenshotted every statement.
Then I took my kids home.
At 8:04 the storm door rattled so hard Emilia ran to her room.
Nicole was on my step in her good wool coat, phone in her fist.
“My card just got declined at the bakery,” she said.
“I’ve got brunch for twenty-two people on hold.”
“Merry Christmas, Nicole.”
“Fix it. That’s MOM’S account.”
“Mom’s account. Paid out of my checks.”
“I pay her bills. You don’t even visit.”
“Mom’s money bought FOUR PATIO HEATERS.”
She blinked. Then she went right around it.
“Jarrod’s bonus covered the party. Everybody knows that.”
“Then why is the caterer on Mom’s statement?”
She opened her mouth and shut it again.
Behind me, Kabir had come into the hall.
He stood by the hooks where his jacket was still drying.
Nicole looked at him for about one second.
She didn’t ask how he was.
She looked back at my phone.
“You’re making this sound worse than it is,” she said.
I scrolled to October.
A jeweler. $3,900.
Nicole’s left hand was on my door frame. I looked at it.
She put it in her coat pocket.
“Don’t you dare show Dad that one,” she said.
Her shoe in the doorway
“The ring?” I said.
“Yes, the ring. Keep your voice down.”
So that was what the charge bought.
A ring on my sister’s hand, while I was buying Mom’s cardigans two at a time when they went on sale.
I put my phone behind my back.
Nicole pushed her shoe against the bottom of my door.
“Let me come in. He doesn’t need to hear this.”
She meant Kabir. Now she remembered he was there.
I wanted to shut the door hard enough to give that shoe a separate address.
Instead, I asked my son to check whether his sister wanted her rabbit.
He went down the hall.
“Move your foot.”
“You’re going to upset Dad over something I can explain.”
“Explain it.”
“Not standing outside.”
“You found room inside for twenty-two people.”
She pulled her foot away.
I shut the front door, turned the lock, and stood there with my hand on it.
Nicole rang the bell twice. Then my phone lit up with her name.
Her message said she would replace anything that had accidentally gone on the wrong card.
Anything. Accidentally.
I sent back one sentence: Bring the receipts and the card here at noon.
Through the glass, she read it.
She shook her head at me like I was a child refusing cough syrup.
Then she typed again.
Dad doesn’t need another problem.
I put the phone down beside the jacket hooks.
She’d let him spend Christmas Eve stranded on an interstate, believing her.
Why was this particular charge the thing he couldn’t see?
Mom’s cardigan pocket
The day we opened that account, Mom put her glasses in my sister’s purse and accused me of taking them.
Nicole reached into the purse, pulled them out, and put them on Mom’s face.
“Found them, Mama.”
Mom kissed her hand.
That was Nicole’s place in our family. She found the glasses.
I stood there holding the bag from the pharmacy and trying not to say, You put them there yourself.
We were sorting Mom’s clothes for the move. Nicole wanted matching hangers.
I wanted labels that survived a washing machine.
“You’re making it look like camp,” she said.
“At these prices, there ought to be a lake.”
Mom laughed. Then she asked when we were going home.
Dad went into the bathroom and stayed there long enough for us to stop pretending he was washing his hands.
Nicole sat beside me on the bed.
“You work nights. You’re across town. Let me handle the running around.”
She offered to buy the things Mom needed, keep the receipts in a zipper pouch, and send me pictures each month.
I offered $1,200.
I’d done the arithmetic on the back of a receipt.
I could cover that amount with overtime and still keep a little for the kids.
Nicole tapped the number.
“Don’t promise it if you can’t do it.”
I set up the automatic transfer while she stood beside me.
The first month, she sent every receipt. The second, she sent most.
By spring, she sent pictures of Mom instead.
I accepted the pictures.
That’s the part I don’t get to polish.
In September, Dad brought a repair estimate to my house.
The Buick needed work he wanted done before winter.
He folded the estimate into his checkbook when Nicole arrived with Mom’s laundry.
“Don’t spend that yet,” she told him. “Let Jarrod ask his guy.”
Dad put the checkbook away.
She could do that with him.
Save him a trip, save him a call, take something off his hands.
He’d spent forty-nine years with Mom keeping track of things.
Nicole stepped into the empty space without moving a chair.
On Christmas morning, I dug the zipper pouch out of my kitchen drawer.
Nicole had dropped it there months earlier.
There were eleven receipts inside.
The newest was from April.
The phone basket
Marlys came over at nine carrying a bag of gifts she’d kept overnight so the kids wouldn’t find them.
She stopped when I let her in.
“Did you sleep at all?”
“Apparently we’re skipping that part of Christmas.”
I told her enough. Her bag hit the floor.
“I saw Nicole open the door. I waited until they went in.”
“They did go in.”
Marlys pressed both palms against her coat.
I couldn’t have another person blaming herself in my hallway.
Dad was already doing enough of that for a church basement.
“Will you stay with them while I sort this out?”
She took off her coat.
Kabir came out with his phone.
He set it on the arm of the couch.
“She gave it back when Grandpa came.”
I settled beside him.
“Who did?”
“Aunt Nicole. There was a basket. Everybody was putting phones in it.”
Nicole liked a phone-free party. She said it made people present.
Mostly it kept anyone from taking pictures before she’d fixed the cushions.
“Did you ask for it?”
He nodded.
“She said Grandpa was coming and I didn’t need it.”
I wanted to go straight to her house.
I wanted her standing where I could reach her with every word I hadn’t said at the door.
Kabir kept touching the corner of his phone.
“Mine stays with me now?”
“Yours stays with you.”
I put my number on his sister’s small tablet, too, and made both devices ring my phone.
Marlys answered from the kitchen while I stood beside them.
Emilia tried it twice.
Then she took her rabbit into Marlys’s lap.
My first attempt at getting our day back lasted twelve minutes.
Jarrod called.
“What’s happening with the card?”
“Did Nicole tell you where the children spent last night?”
“She said there was a mix-up with your dad.”
“There wasn’t a mix-up when he called her.”
He went quiet.
I gave him the times. The heater charge. The ring.
“She’s saying you froze it because you’re upset about the party.”
“I am upset about the party.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did. A woman could be angry or right, but apparently the family discount didn’t cover both.
“Come at noon with her,” I said.
“Bring anything you have showing you paid those bills.”
“We’ve got people coming.”
“Then tell them you’re late.”
He didn’t agree. He said he’d talk to Nicole.
A minute later, she sent a picture of Mom from the previous week.
Mom was wearing the cardigan I’d bought in November.
Under the picture: Some of us actually show up.
I nearly answered. My thumbs were ready to produce a family-sized disaster.
Instead, I sent Dad the jeweler’s charge and asked whether he knew anything about it.
Then I told work I couldn’t take the extra shift I’d agreed to that afternoon.
That was $432 gone.
I wrote it down because numbers were easier than crying.
Nicole sent one more message.
Unfreeze it before noon or you can do every visit yourself.
October 16
I opened eighteen months of statements on my laptop while Marlys helped Emilia put batteries in her present.
Kabir sat on the floor beside them.
Every few minutes, he’d look toward the front door.
I moved the laptop so my body blocked the screen.
The money had to become my problem again.
He’d carried enough of it without knowing what it was.
I made two columns. Mom. Not Mom.
Pharmacy, Mom.
The place that cut her hair, Mom.
Nicole’s anniversary dinner, definitely not Mom.
Mom disliked steak because she said people spent too much time sawing at supper.
The car payments were $985.26 each.
I checked them three times. My car payment wasn’t half that.
Apparently Nicole’s SUV also came with a small upstairs apartment.
The bartender cost $360. The spa was $286. The steakhouse was $198.61.
With the party bills and the ring, the total was $9,265.13.
I didn’t put every unfamiliar purchase in that column.
I left several alone until I could get receipts.
I wanted money she could explain, not a number she could knock down by pointing out Mom needed socks.
Then I reached October 16.
A deposit of $3,900.
It wasn’t one of mine.
The jeweler’s charge posted two days later.
I enlarged the deposit image. Dad’s handwriting filled the check.
On the memo line, he’d written Diane.
For a minute, I sat with my finger against the screen where Mom’s name was.
Dad had contributed before. Twenty dollars tucked in a cardigan pocket.
Cash for Mom’s hair because he wanted her to have it done before their anniversary.
Not $3,900.
His answer came while the check was still open.
Where did you get that picture?
From our account, I wrote.
He called.
“Did Nicole send you to ask me about this?”
“No.”
“She said she’d handle it.”
“Handle what?”
He didn’t answer.
“Dad, that check went into Mom’s account.”
“I know where it went.”
He sounded angry with me.
After the morning we’d had, I couldn’t find a place to put that.
“Was that your repair money?”
He said yes.
The estimate in his checkbook. Nicole telling him to wait.
The Buick on the shoulder with him inside it.
I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was asked not to.”
“By Nicole?”
“I want you both in the same room.”
“Come here at noon.”
“I don’t have the car.”
“I’ll get you.”
“No. I’ll ride with her.”
I tried to ask what she’d told him.
He said we would talk when he got there, and the call ended.
Marlys stood in the kitchen doorway.
“Do I need to take the children to mine?”
“Please.”
I packed their presents back into the bag.
Emilia objected to leaving the rabbit behind, although nobody had suggested such a thing.
Kabir put his phone in his pocket before he put on his coat.
At the door, he turned.
“Are we in trouble for saying it?”
I crouched in front of him.
“No. Nobody gets to make you sorry you told me.”
He held on to my neck hard enough to pull the collar of my shirt sideways.
Behind him, my laptop still showed Dad’s check.
Nicole had spent the money that was supposed to keep his car running.
The envelope under my arm
My niece Cierra texted just after eleven.
She was twenty. Her sister, Simone, was eighteen.
I’d helped both girls practice driving in the empty lot behind my house, which meant they owed me at least two years of normal blood pressure.
Mom says don’t answer you. I’m answering.
I asked whether she could come with them.
She called instead.
“I took Emilia back out there.”
“I know.”
“I thought Grandpa was almost there. Mom kept saying five minutes.”
“Did you see the heater working?”
“No.”
“Did you check?”
“No.”
She cried then. I let her.
I had no comfort to spare for that particular answer.
“I should’ve brought them upstairs,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I’m coming.”
“Tell Simone she can come, too.”
While I waited, I put the bank pages in an envelope.
I wrote the total on the outside, then crossed it out and wrote it again because the first version looked like I’d done it on a bus.
Nicole called twice. I let it ring.
She sent a message offering $2,550 for the caterer and patio heaters.
That would have been a useful mistake. Two adjacent bills.
Wrong card, busy week, there you go.
I answered: All the receipts. The card. Noon.
She sent: You’re going to make Dad sick.
I went into the bathroom and shut the door.
I hadn’t cried when Kabir told me about the garage.
He was looking at me then.
I hadn’t cried over the bank account because there was still arithmetic to do.
Now I sat on the closed toilet and cried into a washcloth so the neighbor wouldn’t hear through the open kitchen window.
My sister knew exactly which family member to put between herself and a question.
I splashed water on my face.
The washcloth went into the hamper with Emilia’s tights.
Then I went next door.
Marlys had put the children’s new toys on the floor by her couch.
Emilia was explaining something to a plastic horse that didn’t appear to be listening.
I handed Marlys my spare key.
“If they need anything from home, go get it. Don’t knock.”
Kabir followed me to the door.
“You’re coming back?”
“I’m twenty steps away.”
He counted from the window while I crossed the grass.
I heard him reach nineteen.
Nicole’s SUV pulled in at 12:08. Dad was in front.
Jarrod got out of the back with both girls.
Nicole carried a bakery box.
She’d found another way to pay for brunch after all.
“Put that in your car,” I said.
“It’s Christmas.”
“I know the date.”
She left it on my porch rail.
Dad came inside first.
He stopped beside the couch, where Kabir’s blanket was still folded.
“I don’t want any shouting,” he said.
“Then don’t shout.”
Nicole put her purse on a chair and took off her coat.
The ring stayed on.
Jarrod stood beside her. Cierra and Simone stayed near the hallway.
I held the envelope under my arm.
“Dad, before we start, I need to know why you gave Nicole that money.”
He looked at my sister.
“Tell her.”
Nicole shook her head.
“This isn’t the time.”
Dad turned back to me.
“I covered it, Tonya. I couldn’t let your mother go without.”
I couldn’t get the next word out.
Nicole came toward me with her hand held open for the envelope.
“Give me those. You’ve embarrassed him enough.”
Dad didn’t stop her.
Dad’s messages
I stepped back before Nicole could take the envelope.
“What did you cover?”
“Don’t do this,” she said.
Dad took his phone out.
“You needed some money. Nicole told me. She said you were going to put it back.”
I put the envelope on the couch.
“How much?”
His eyes went to my sister.
“$3,900.”
Nicole rested her palm against his arm.
“Dad, she was under pressure. We said we wouldn’t judge.”
I wanted to knock that sentence out of her mouth.
Instead, I held out my hand for his phone.
He gave it to me.
Her October messages were still there.
Dad kept texts the way he kept screws in coffee cans.
Nothing got thrown away because somebody might need it.
Tonya borrowed from Diane’s account. She’s behind on things.
Please don’t humiliate her by bringing it up.
Below that: She promised she’d replace it, but Mom needs that cushion now.
Dad’s answer was six words.
I have the money for the Buick.
I launched my banking app beside his phone.
October 1. My $1,200 deposit.
October 16. His check.
October 18. The jeweler.
I set both phones in his hands.
“Find the withdrawal she says I made.”
Nicole reached for her purse.
“The dates don’t tell you everything.”
“Show him,” I said.
She pulled out a tissue instead.
Dad scrolled upward through the transactions. Then back down.
I opened September. August. Every transfer was there.
He sat on the couch.
“That money was for you?”
“No, Dad.”
He looked at Nicole’s left hand.
She folded it under her other one.
I’d been ready for her to steal from the account.
I’d spent the morning putting a number on it.
She’d also sent Dad home believing his younger daughter needed rescuing and was too ashamed to say thank you.
He pressed his phone into my hand.
“Did you know I was giving it?”
“No.”
Nicole started to speak.
Dad stood up before she got the first word out.
“Take your hand out from under your arm.”
The ring on my couch
Nicole held her left hand against her waist.
“Jarrod bought this for me.”
Jarrod moved away from her.
“You told me you used part of my bonus.”
“I did. It’s household money. It all comes from somewhere.”
“Not from my mother,” I said.
“Your mother? She’s my mother, too.”
Dad held out his hand.
Nicole stared at it.
“You can’t seriously expect me to hand over my wedding ring.”
“You were married eleven years before you bought that,” he said.
“It was an upgrade.”
The word landed badly.
Cierra covered her mouth. Simone studied the carpet.
Nicole took the ring off and dropped it into Dad’s palm.
“Fine. Is everybody happy?”
Dad put it on the couch beside the envelope.
“No.”
She turned toward Jarrod.
“Say something.”
He held up his phone.
“I checked our account. You never moved money for the caterer.”
“I was going to.”
“When?”
“After the holidays. I didn’t want everything coming out at once.”
I took the pages out of the envelope.
“The car payments?”
She looked at the girls.
“We’ve had expenses.”
“The spa?”
“I spend every week taking care of Mom. You get to go there when it suits you and bring flowers.”
I hadn’t brought Mom flowers in months.
She pulled the petals off and tried to put them in her pockets.
Nicole should’ve known that.
“You have receipts for those expenses?” I said.
“You’re charging me with something now?”
“I’m asking you to put her money back.”
She laughed once.
“Do you know what it costs to have everybody depend on you?”
Dad sat down again. This time he didn’t look away from her.
“I gave you the money because you said Tonya took it.”
“I was trying to protect her.”
“From what?” he said.
Nicole pointed at me.
“Look at her. She’s worked herself half to death. The kids are always being passed around. You were worried about her already.”
I wanted to answer every ugly part of that.
I wanted to count every extra shift and every bedtime call from the locker room.
Cierra stepped away from the wall.
“Don’t talk about them.”
Nicole turned.
“You stay out of this.”
“No.”
It was a small word.
Cierra had never used it on her mother in front of me.
Nicole pointed toward the door.
“Then go home.”
Cierra stayed where she was.
“I asked if they could sit in the den.”
“You asked in front of guests.”
“I asked because Emilia wanted to go somewhere warm.”
“Your grandfather was on his way.”
“You told him they were making cookies,” Cierra said.
“I was trying to keep him calm.”
Dad hit his palm against his knee.
“For who?”
Nicole pulled her coat off the chair.
“You all stood in that house. None of you complained while you were eating the food.”
Jarrod’s face went red.
“I thought they were upstairs.”
“Well, you could’ve checked.”
He nodded.
“Yes. I could’ve.”
That stopped her for a second.
Then she looked at me.
“You want an apology? I’m sorry the arrangements didn’t work out. I’m sorry your father had car trouble. But I had people there who mattered to Jarrod, and I couldn’t spend the evening rearranging everything because your babysitting fell through.”
Cierra started crying again.
Dad stood so fast the ring slid between the cushions.
I reached down and retrieved it.
“You put my grandchildren in a garage,” he said.
“You took my money and let me thank you.”
Nicole stepped toward him.
“Daddy.”
He stepped back.
She stood there with her coat over one arm.
Nobody took it from her.
I laid the total on top of the other pages.
“$9,265.13. Dad gets his $3,900 back. The rest goes into Mom’s account.”
“I don’t have that sitting around.”
“The ring. Your car,” Jarrod said.
She turned on him.
“You’d make me sell my car?”
“You used her account to make the payments.”
“What am I supposed to drive?”
“The car I take to work. We’ll work it out.”
She glanced toward her girls. Neither one moved.
“I’ll pay it back monthly.”
“No,” I said.
“You don’t get to decide everything.”
“I decide whether I keep paying for your life.”
Dad picked up the debit card after she threw it onto the couch.
Jarrod asked for the statements. I handed him copies.
He said he’d go through the charges with her that evening, and they’d bring me a repayment date the next day.
Nicole stopped at the door.
“You’ve wrecked Christmas over money.”
“No,” I said. “Over my children.”
She waited for more.
I pulled the door wide.
$9,265.13
The ring brought $2,100.
Nicole sent me the sale receipt on the following Tuesday.
No message with it.
Her SUV went the next week. After the loan payoff, she received $7,165.13.
Jarrod sent the paperwork and stood in my hallway while the two transfers went through.
Dad received $3,900.
Mom’s account received $5,365.13.
I checked the cents before I put my phone down.
Jarrod held a bag containing Mom’s receipts and the cardigans Nicole still had at her house.
“I should’ve checked upstairs,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I told the people who were there. About the kids. About who funded the party.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
He showed me the message he’d sent. No mix-up. No arrangements. He’d written garage.
Two people replied that they hadn’t known.
I didn’t need to read the rest.
Nicole lost the card that Christmas morning.
After the outstanding purchases cleared, I moved Mom’s remaining money into an account Nicole couldn’t touch and stopped my old transfer.
I bought Mom’s extras directly.
Cierra offered to collect things on her way to visit.
She sent receipts before I asked.
The first time she brought the children a present, she stayed on my porch until I invited her in.
She apologized to them without putting her mother in the sentence.
Kabir accepted it. Emilia wanted to show her the horse.
Dad brought his repaired Buick over on a Saturday. The bill was $1,826.40.
He spread it on the hood for me, then tried to give me the remaining money.
“For the shifts you’ve missed.”
I folded his fingers over it.
“Keep your car running.”
He pulled me into him and cried against the top of my head.
“I’m sorry, Tonya.”
I held on until he stopped trying to let go.
Then he pulled open the Buick’s back door for my children.
The side door
We visited Mom that afternoon.
Nicole wasn’t there.
Dad sat beside Mom while Emilia showed her pictures of the horse on her tablet.
Mom called it a dog. Emilia considered that, then showed her another picture.
Kabir pushed Mom’s glasses up when they slipped.
I put two cardigans in her drawer and wrote her name inside each one.
Cierra had brought labels that stayed on in the wash.
No matching hangers. We survived.
Mom took Dad’s hand.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I know, sweetheart.”
She let him keep holding it.
On the way home, Dad stopped at my house to return the patio cushions the children had sat on.
Nicole had sent them with the last bag of Mom’s things.
I left them in his trunk.
“They can go back to her.”
He nodded and shut it.
Kabir went ahead with my keys.
I’d had a house key cut for him that week.
He tested it whenever he got the chance, as though the lock might change its mind.
Our side door opened into the laundry room.
He unlocked it, pushed it wide, and stood to one side while Emilia carried her rabbit in.
She stopped at the hallway.
The light was off.
I came up behind her with the bag from Mom’s room.
Dad waited on the step.
“Want me to get it?” I said.
Emilia shook her head.
She reached around the corner and found the switch herself.
Kabir started taking his coat off.
Then he paused and held the door for Dad.
“Everybody in,” he said.
Dad stepped over the threshold.
I put my hand against my son’s back and went inside with him.
If this one got to you, send it to somebody who makes sure there’s room inside for every child.
Family tensions have a way of surfacing at the worst moments – see how one sister turned a wedding into a cleanup duty in My Sister Put Me On Cleanup For Her Wedding, while another family dinner left a husband’s seat conspicuously empty in Dad Left My Husband’s Seat Empty at My Birthday Dinner. And when money and family collide, My Sister Wrote “Gift” Beside My Payments on Mom’s Home shows just how ugly things can get.
