“No! Please don’t burn that!” I screamed while my father threw my grandmother’s handmade quilt into a flaming barrel behind our house.

years ago to keep my mother from having any legal rights to it. That toxic arrogance had finally backfired. My mother wasn’t legally bound to the massive debt, but Gerald was completely ruined. The bank had seized the property, and the house was scheduled for a public courthouse auction in exactly two weeks.