The money disappeared while my niece slept on my chest.
One second, little Eira was a warm, heavy bundle curled against my heartbeat in my small Virginia apartment. The next, my phone buzzed on the nightstand and my entire life split straight down the middle.
I shifted just enough to grab the phone without waking her. The screen glowed in the dark.
From: Mom
We’re moving to Barcelona.
I emptied the account.
Good luck.
Six lines. No emojis. No call. No “love you.”
Just a financial bomb and a forwarding city.
For a full minute, I didn’t move. My body went numb first; my brain lagged behind like it refused to translate the words.
Then muscle memory took over. I opened the banking app, thumb hovering, praying I’d somehow misread.
Shared Family Fund – Balance: $0.00
Two weeks ago the account had held just over $18,000. Savings we’d all poured into for years.
They took every cent.
The same account we’d built “for emergencies,” for “shared support,” for “whoever needs it next.” My parents’ lecture stipends, my freelance paychecks, even side money from my mom’s “European wellness coaching” clients.
Mom, Dad, my sister Bria, and me.
Well. Not “and me” anymore.
Eira stirred, her tiny fingers stretching against my collarbone, her breath warm and milky on my skin. Six months old, cheeks flushed from sleep, blissfully ignorant that two people she’d never remember had just made a decision that would shape her entire life.
I pressed my lips to the soft fuzz of her hair.
“Thanks for the heads up,” I whispered.
No reply came, of course. The text might as well have been a door slamming from an ocean away.
I slid out from under her as carefully as if she were made of glass and laid her in the portable bassinet beside the couch. She sighed, one fist still tucked under her chin, and kept sleeping.
The silence around us felt loud. The hum of the old fridge. The traffic on the street outside. Somewhere down the hall a neighbor’s TV murmured out an American game show rerun, the canned applause sounding like mockery.
I walked to the kitchen, opened the cabinet above the microwave, and pulled out the paper files my mother always mocked.
“Who prints bank statements in 2024, Danica?” she’d laughed once, wrinkling her perfectly Botoxed forehead. “You’re such a little archivist.”
I’d ignored her.
Now those stupid printed pages were the only proof I wasn’t imagining all this.
Two weeks earlier: $18,437.32.
Today: zero.
I tried calling.
Mom’s number went straight to voicemail. Dad’s rang twice and then cut off. I texted my sister.
Me:
Where are they.
Where are you.
The little “Read” receipt appeared. No answer.
My chest didn’t ache the way it does when you get bad news you didn’t expect. The feeling was heavier, duller. Not panic.
Recognition.
Of course they’d do this. Of course I was the one left holding the baby. The debt. The silence.
It had been headed here for years.
Being “the reliable one” never starts dramatically. It starts small. Quiet. A forgotten pickup here, an extra favor there.
When we were kids in Richmond, it was me leaving student council meetings early to grab Bria from ballet because Mom was “on a deadline” for some essay that never got published. It was me folding my dad’s shirts while Bria talked about her newest “creative phase.” It was me staying home on Friday nights because Bria had a panic attack and Mom needed “help.”
They praised me for being responsible.
They praised Bria for being brilliant.
By high school, Bria was all fire and drama—tears in parking lots, love notes on napkins, half-finished majors at half a dozen colleges. People adored her for it. Professors, girlfriends, random baristas in college towns from Vermont to California.
“She just feels so deeply,” Mom would sigh, hand over her heart.
Me? I paid the late fees on her library books.
The family fund started after Bria’s second psychiatric hospitalization.
“We all need to know we’re safe,” Dad said at our chipped oak kitchen table, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “If someone else ever needs help, this will be our shared net.”
Someone else. He’d actually used those words.
Not Bria. Not again. Someone else.
I’d believed him.
For a while.
The first time Bria drained the account, it was “by accident.”
A retreat in the Catskills. Soul work. Shadow work. Wake-up-at-dawn-and-scream-into-the-forest work. She came home talking about transformation and alignment and how coffee was “low vibration” now.
I looked at the numbers and saw $7,300 gone.
The second time, it was a move to Los Angeles to write a memoir she never started. The fund dropped by another $9,000.
Mom and Dad told me I was being “rigid” about money. “She’s trying to become who she’s meant to be, Danica,” Mom had said, swirling her stemless wine glass. “Don’t you want that for your sister?”
Meanwhile I postponed buying new glasses—twice—and kept driving on brakes that squealed every time I eased down the steep hill toward the grocery store.
Now here we were. New stunt, same pattern.
Only this time they hadn’t just taken money.
They’d taken Eira’s grandparents. And her mother.
And left me in a two-bedroom apartment in a mid-sized Virginia town with whatever formula was left in the cabinet and exactly $412 in my personal checking account.
I went back to the living room and sat on the floor beside Eira’s bassinet. Her chest rose and fell. Her eyelashes fluttered in her sleep.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Here we are.”
By morning, I’d start calling lawyers. I’d look into guardianship. I’d figure out childcare and extra shifts and how on earth to keep my freelance editorial clients happy while my life had quietly exploded. But for that moment, in the blue-lit dark, all I could do was sit and watch her breathe.
Because deep down, under the shock, I already knew the truth:
They weren’t coming back.
Not for her.
And definitely not for me.
By day four, my body had adjusted to operating in ninety-minute fragments.
Eira’s sleep schedule was an unsolvable math equation. Three naps of forty minutes. One long, panicky crying jag from 2:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. Every time I thought I’d cracked the code, she changed it.
Her lungs were impressive. My nerves… less so.
I worked in flashes. Editing footnotes for a regional history journal while she slept on a folded towel beside my laptop. The client had sent two “friendly reminders” about the upcoming deadline.
“Family emergency,” I wrote back, which felt like calling a house fire a “mild inconvenience.”
I bounced her until my biceps burned, then rocked her with one arm while scrolling through legal aid websites with the other. Podcasts murmured in my earbuds at 3:00 a.m. just to keep me upright.
I watched my phone obsessively for updates from Barcelona that never came.
Friends texted.
You okay?
Need anything?
Sending hugs.
I answered with the same two lies: “We’re fine” and a heart emoji.
No one showed up.
Of course they didn’t. Everyone had kids, bills, lives. And I’d spent so many years being “the strong one” that even I didn’t know how to sound like I needed help until the words felt too big to say out loud.
On Thursday morning, after a night of pacing the living room with Eira strapped to my chest in a carrier while she screamed directly into my collarbone, I opened the front door to get the mail and almost stepped on it.
A small Tupperware container, still warm.
Steam fogged the lid. A note lay underneath, written in tiny, careful cursive.
You’re doing more than enough.
I looked across the hall.
Mrs. Alz’s curtains twitched just slightly. She was retired, lived alone with her paperback mysteries and daytime talk shows. We’d spoken maybe twice. Once about trash pickup. Once about the mail being misdelivered.
She’d noticed.
My throat tightened. I swallowed the lump down and opened the container.
Chicken stew. The kind that tastes like childhood and rest and someone else’s hands doing the work. I ate it that afternoon standing at the counter, Eira balanced on my hip, tears stinging the corners of my eyes for no good reason and every reason at once.
That night, there was a gentle knock.
When I opened the door, Mrs. Alz stood there with a folded quilt.
“I made it for the wrong-sized bed,” she said matter-of-factly. “Might as well keep somebody warm.”
I thanked her. She didn’t ask to come in. She didn’t ask for details.
She just handed me warmth in cotton form and went back to her own apartment.
It was the first time all week I felt truly, solidly seen.
My parents’ house in Richmond smelled exactly the same when I finally drove there.
Lemon wood polish and expensive candles. The faint ghost of burnt coffee.
The driveway was empty. No car in the garage. The porch plants dead, leaves crisped at the edges like they’d given up at the same time their owners did.
I told myself I was only there to grab leftover formula, maybe an extra pack of wipes. That I was being practical.
But as I unlocked the door with my spare key, Eira asleep in the carrier on my chest, I knew what I was really looking for.
Proof.
In the kitchen, the fridge was nearly bare. A jar of imported fig jam, half a bottle of Prosecco, a lemon going soft in the crisper.
No groceries. No mess. The quiet of people who didn’t intend to come back.
I opened every drawer methodically. Spoons, neatly aligned. Dish towels still folded. Appliance manuals my father refused to throw away.
The file drawer was hidden, as always, in the bottom cabinet beneath a nest of takeout menus and old wine corks.
A worn green folder sat on top.
Spain.
My stomach clenched.
Inside were printed itineraries dating back six months. Flight confirmations from Dulles to Barcelona-El Prat. Apartment lease agreements in Spanish. Prepaid Spanish SIM cards already activated. Notes about residency requirements and international tax accommodations.
This hadn’t been impulsive.
It hadn’t even been recent.
They’d been planning their escape for half a year.
Behind the itineraries, another piece of paper.
I knew my signature before I fully understood what I was looking at.
Power of Attorney – Minor Child
Quinn, Eira – age 6 months.
Guardian: Quinn, Danica.
Term: Indefinite.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I whispered.
The signature line at the bottom: my name, copied from an old lease. Not forged exactly—a perfect scan of my actual signature printed onto the form. Someone had cut and pasted me into legal responsibility.
They had made me Eira’s legal guardian without a single actual conversation.
No warning. No consent. Just paperwork.
My vision blurred. I blinked it back into focus.
Behind the power of attorney sat the last bank statement from our shared family fund.
Withdrawal: $21,600.
Destination: Meridian Trust – Private International Division.
Not even a U.S. bank.
They hadn’t just emptied the account.
They’d moved the money offshore.
I sat at the kitchen table where they’d once corrected my posture and grilled me about my “back-up plans.”
I should have felt rage hot enough to burn the laminate off the surface. I should have wanted to smash their monogrammed mugs against the tile backsplash.
Instead I felt something harder to move.
Stillness.
This wasn’t a moment of weakness or a panicked decision. This was strategy. They chose Europe.
They chose themselves.
They chose to call it “a sabbatical” while telling everyone who might ask that “Danica is helping with the baby for a while—she’s so nurturing, it’s natural for her.”
I folded the documents, slid them into my bag, and stood.
The house was silent. No ghosts. Just choices.
“Okay,” I said to the empty air. “Your turn’s over.”
Back home, I laid Eira in her bassinet, opened my laptop, and typed into the search bar:
how to file emergency guardianship virginia
financial abandonment shared account legal
By the time the sun set, I had a list of numbers to call and a legal aid site bookmarked. By midnight, I had an appointment.
The next week, I had a lawyer.
Legal Aid Richmond looked exactly how I expected.
Too bright, too worn, too busy.
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. A battered plastic ficus tree wilted in the corner. The receptionist didn’t look up as I checked in, just slid a clipboard toward me with a half-chewed pen.
Eira snoozed in her carrier against my chest, her head heavy in the crook of my neck.
“Ms. Quinn?” a voice called.
I looked up.
The man in the doorway looked tired but alive. Shirt sleeves rolled to the forearms, tie slightly crooked, coffee stain faint on his cuff. He carried a file folder and a paper cup.
“Ephraim Rowe,” he said, holding out his hand. “Come on back. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
It was the first time in weeks someone talked to me like I wasn’t overreacting.
I spread the documents across his desk: power of attorney, the travel itineraries, the bank statements, my mother’s text. My hands shook, just a bit, as I laid them out.
Ephraim read everything slowly.
He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t make the thoughtful sympathetic sounds professionals sometimes make to fill silence.
When he finished the last page, he tapped the stack with two fingers.
“They didn’t notify you?” he asked.
“No.”
“They didn’t discuss guardianship beforehand? Or the move? Or the account?”
“No,” I said again. “Just that text. ‘We’re moving to Barcelona. I emptied the account. Good luck.’”
He sat back, jaw tightening. “Okay,” he said. “So this isn’t just a guardianship situation. This is potential financial abuse. Possibly fraud, depending on how that fund was labeled on their taxes. And legally…”
He lifted the power of attorney.
“…this may be valid on paper, but the way they executed it is not.”
“Can they just take it back?” I asked, voice breaking despite my best efforts. “Show up one day and decide they’re ready to parent again?”
“If we do nothing? Maybe,” he admitted honestly. “If we move now? No. We file for full legal custody, contest the power of attorney as obtained without informed consent, and freeze that account while we track the offshore transfer.”
I stared at him.
“It’ll be slow,” he added. “Courts move at their own pace. It’ll be tedious. And they will absolutely try to paint you as hysterical, ungrateful, unstable—”
“I’ve been up every two hours for a month,” I said. “I’m already living tedious.”
He smiled once, quick. “All right then.”
That afternoon, back in my apartment, I started building.
Not pottery. Not historical archives.
A case.
I dug through my phone for old texts from Bria.
Can you watch Eira just for the weekend? I need sleep.
You’re a lifesaver. Only you really get her energy.
I printed them all. I highlighted every “weekend,” every “quick favor,” every “just until.”
I screen-shotted my mom’s message. I pulled the logs from the bank. I wrote a timeline in a Google doc from the day they dropped Eira at my doorstep with two suitcases and a “we’ll talk logistics later” to the moment I found the Spain folder.
And then, for the first time since that text, my phone lit up with my sister’s name.
Bria.
I almost let it go to voicemail. Then I remembered Ephraim’s words.
We document everything.
I answered and pressed “record” right away with a silent prayer that Virginia’s one-party consent laws were exactly what I thought they were.
“Danica,” Bria said, her voice clipped. “You need to calm down.”
I laughed once, no humor in it. “Good morning to you, too.”
“You agreed to this,” she snapped. “You’re acting like the victim of some kidnapping. You wanted to help.”
“For a weekend,” I said calmly. “You dropped her off Friday and said you’d be back Sunday. It’s been a month.”
“You always dramatize,” she scoffed. “Mom and Dad were done carrying you. You think they abandoned you? Grow up. They’re finally living. You’re the one clinging to this martyr act.”
“They weren’t carrying me,” I said quietly. “They were hiding behind me.”
Silence stretched across the line for three full seconds.
“You’re not going to scare us with legal talk,” she said finally. “You won’t do it. You never do. You just threaten and sulk. It’s done, Dani. Deal with it.”
“I already am,” I said.
She hung up.
I labeled the file “Call with B – 11:12 a.m.” and backed it up in three places.
That night, Eira ran a low fever. I sat on the bathroom floor with her cradled against my chest, the shower running hot to steam up the room, and rocked her while she whimpered.
I didn’t feel strong.
I didn’t feel righteous.
I just felt… done.
Done waiting for them to decide I mattered.
Done being the quiet shelf they stacked their mess on.
The next morning, I called Ephraim.
“I have something you need to hear,” I said.
The text came on a Sunday morning like nothing had happened.
We’re flying back. We want to see her.
No apology.
No acknowledgment of the money.
Just a statement, like they were texting a house-sitter about picking up their mail.
I didn’t respond.
Three days later, they knocked.
My mother stood in the hallway in a long camel coat and a scarf that probably cost more than my rent. Her hair was freshly done, not a strand out of place. My father wore sunglasses perched on his head like a crown, even though it was overcast.
They looked tan. Rested. Like people who had spent a month walking Spanish beaches and drinking wine in Gothic Quarter bars instead of wordlessly moving funds and forging signatures and leaving their granddaughter behind.
“You look tired,” Mom said, sweeping past me like she owned the place. “Still doing that part-time editing thing?”
Dad followed, arms crossed as his gaze flicked over my small living room like it was a disappointing rental listing.
“We were surprised you didn’t reach out sooner,” he said. “Figured you’d have questions. But I guess not everyone’s cut out for parenting.”
I shut the door and leaned against it.
I didn’t offer them coffee. I didn’t ask how their flight was.
Mom walked straight to Eira’s high chair. Eira sat there happily gumming a strip of banana, cheeks sticky, hair a wild halo.
Mom clucked her tongue.
“Her posture’s off,” she murmured. “You really should be doing tummy time consistently. These early months are critical. In Spain they—”
“I filed for full custody three weeks ago,” I said.
She froze.
Dad’s head snapped up. “You what?”
“I filed for full legal custody,” I repeated, my voice steady. “With documentation of the offshore transfer, the power of attorney you never discussed with me, and the fact that you left the country—for an indefinite period—without arranging care or financial support beyond forging my name.”
“You are overreacting,” Dad said, and for the first time in my life, it sounded weak coming out of his mouth.
“You always had a flare for melodrama,” Mom added, but her voice had lost its smoothness. “Let’s not make this ugly, Danica.”
“It’s already ugly,” I said. “I just stopped pretending it isn’t.”
Dad cleared his throat, trying for a more reasonable tone.
“We can work this out as a family,” he said. “No need for courts. Take a breath. You’re stressed. Sleep deprived. We understand that.”
“No,” I said. “You don’t. And the court date is set.”
Their eyes flicked to each other.
There it was again—that quiet recognition I’d become so familiar with: not realizing they’d done something wrong, but realizing they’d finally met a version of me who wasn’t going to roll over and absorb it.
“I think we should leave,” Dad muttered.
I opened the door.
Mom paused in the threshold and turned back.
“You were always jealous of Bria,” she said, her voice low and sharp. “Even as a child. You waited for a chance to punish us for loving her more. Congratulations.”
I stared at her for a long beat.
Then I closed the door gently.
Eira dropped her banana on the floor and clapped, delighted by the sound.
“Same,” I said softly, scooping her up.
The courtroom in downtown Richmond smelled like dust and old wood.
Eira sat in the hallway outside with Mrs. Alz, who had shown up without being asked, armed with a diaper bag and a mystery novel.
“It’ll be boring,” she said. “Babies hate boring. Go on. I’ve got her.”
Inside, the bench looked bigger than any piece of furniture had a right to be. The judge—a woman in her fifties with kind eyes and a jaw that said she’d seen too much—took her seat and shuffled through papers.
My parents arrived ten minutes late.
Mom in a navy sheath dress, Dad in a blazer he only wore to events he thought might make the paper. No Bria. No explanation.
They sat on the other side of the aisle with a lawyer who looked sleek and disinterested.
Ephraim rose.
He didn’t thunder. He didn’t posture.
He walked the judge through the timeline like he was reading a careful story.
The fund, created for “whoever needs it next.”
The prior drainings for Bria’s “transformative experiences.”
The new withdrawal of $21,600.
The move to Barcelona, planned for months, evidenced by travel plans and a lease.
The power of attorney signed with my scanned signature.
The text: We’re moving to Barcelona. I emptied the account. Good luck.
Then he played the audio.
Bria’s voice filled the courtroom.
You always dramatize everything. You think they abandoned you? Grow up. They’re done carrying you.
The judge’s lips pressed into a thin line.
Mom cleared her throat.
“My daughter is under stress,” she said when it was her turn. “Caring for a child that isn’t yours—you can understand that it would… destabilize someone. She’s always been prone to extremes.”
Dad nodded. “She’s weaponizing our attempts to support the family,” he added. “We trusted her. We knew she’d step up because she’s so… nurturing.”
The judge lifted one hand.
“That’s enough,” she said quietly.
She turned to me.
“Ms. Quinn,” she asked, “did your parents inform you of their plans to leave the country and place you as the primary guardian for your niece?”
“No, Your Honor,” I said. “They dropped Eira off for the weekend and moved to Spain.”
The courtroom was silent except for the rustle of someone shifting on a bench.
The judge shuffled the papers one more time, then set them down.
“What concerns this court,” she said, voice steady, “is not just the abandonment, but the premeditated nature of these actions. Funds were moved. Documents were prepared. Plans were made. And Ms. Quinn was never given the opportunity to consent or refuse.”
She looked directly at my parents.
“A family fund is not a private pension for the most impulsive member,” she said. “Nor is a responsible adult child a built-in escape hatch for parents who no longer wish to parent.”
Mom’s eyes flashed. Dad’s mouth tightened.
The judge lifted her gavel slightly, then lowered it without striking.
“I am granting full legal custody of the minor child to Ms. Danica Quinn,” she ruled. “The offshore account will be frozen pending further review. Any visitation from Sandra and Talbot Quinn will be supervised and approved by this court in advance.”
Mom opened her mouth.
The judge raised an eyebrow.
“We’re done here,” she said. “Court adjourned.”
Outside, the wind had picked up, rattling the old courthouse windows.
On the steps, Mom caught my arm.
“You’ve humiliated us,” she hissed. “You could have handled this quietly. You could have come to us like a normal daughter.”
I met her eyes.
“You could have stayed,” I said.
She flinched.
She didn’t answer.
She turned away, heels ticking down the concrete, Dad trailing her like a long, complicated shadow.
I walked to the car where Mrs. Alz waited with Eira on her lap.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
Eira reached for me, chubby fingers opening and closing in the air.
“We’re staying,” I said, voice thick.
Mrs. Alz nodded once like she’d expected nothing else. “Good,” she said. “Babies don’t like being luggage anyway.”
The kiln hums quietly now most mornings.
I keep it running low while Eira plays on the quilted mat a few feet away in the corner of my small studio, just outside Richmond city limits. The air smells like clay and coffee and the faint whisper of kiln heat.
The cradle I built from old pine slats sits near the shelf of finished bowls. Sometimes she naps there, fingers wrapped around the cloth doll Mrs. Alz stitched by hand.
My hands have finally found their way back into clay.
Cups. Bowls. Plates with thumb-pressed rims.
The local café downtown replaced their chipped mugs with my speckled ones last month, the barista grinning as she lined them up under the espresso machine.
“People keep asking where we got these,” she told me. “I tell them—Virginia made.”
Two afternoons a week, sometimes three if Eira’s in a good mood, I lift the metal grate on the studio door and flip the sign to OPEN.
Neighbors wander in.
A grad student from VCU who wants a set of plates “that look like the inside of river stones.” A retired mechanic who just likes watching the wheel spin. A tired-looking man who buys a small bowl and stands at the window for a long time, watching the traffic on Broad Street like he’s working up the courage to go home.
Mrs. Alz—who finally let me call her Gloria—comes by every Friday with oatmeal cookies wrapped in wax paper.
She never stays long.
She hands me the cookies, squeezes my arm, and says, “You’re doing fine,” like it’s a fact.
Some nights I still wake up expecting another twist. Another text. Some new way they’ve found to reach across an ocean and haunt us.
But months have passed.
The silence has settled into something I can live with.
The legal follow-up has mostly become paperwork and occasional calls from Ephraim with updates about the frozen account.
“No word from Barcelona,” he says each time. “Seems they’re staying in their version of paradise.”
“Good,” I always answer.
Last week, Eira took three wobbly steps between the worktable and the studio door.
She fell on her diaper-padded butt and looked shocked for exactly one second.
Then she laughed like she’d just discovered a private joke with gravity.
I scooped her up and laughed with her.
Later, after she’d fallen asleep in her pine cradle, I stood in the kitchen and cried by myself. Not out of sorrow, exactly.
Because I was the one who saw it.
No one else.
No grandparents with a camera. No aunt filming for Instagram. Just me, my daughter-not-by-blood, and the quiet miracle of her trying again.
Yesterday, I wrote Bria a letter.
Not an email. Not a text. A letter on actual paper like the archivist my mom once lightly mocked.
I didn’t write much.
Eira is safe, I wrote. She is loved. That’s all that matters.
I didn’t include a return address.
Maybe she’ll read it in some Barcelona café and feel something. Maybe she’ll toss it in the trash.
Either way, the loop closes on my side.
This morning, I unlocked the studio, set a fresh block of clay on the wheel, and watched Eira toddle from the shelf of glazes to the window, her hand dragging along the low ledge, leaving sticky fingerprints from the half-eaten banana she refused to let go.
I was left behind so they could escape.
But I stayed.
I filed the motions. I signed the papers. I paid the overdue electric bill with money I made editing dry articles about Civil War troop movements. I survived the nights when she screamed and the days when I felt like the wallpaper again.
I stayed.
And in staying, I built something.
A home with mismatched plates and warm quilts. A studio with shelves that fill slowly, honestly. A life where the people I love know, without question, that I won’t disappear when they become inconvenient.
At the edge of the worktable sits a tiny, misshapen bowl.
Eira made it—or tried to—by jamming her thumb into a mound of clay while I looked away for one second. The dent runs deeper on one side, collapsing the curve.
It’s not symmetrical.
It’s not perfect.
It’s ours.
I pick it up, run my thumb over the little crater her tiny hand made, and set it back where she can see it when she gets older.
“You’re not luggage,” I whisper, glancing at her as she bangs a wooden spoon against the floor.
She looks up, grins, and babbles something that sounds suspiciously like “Yeah.”
The kiln hums.
The wheel spins.
Outside, in an American town my parents didn’t think was worth staying in, life moves on—cars passing, kids shouting, someone’s dog insisting it should be walked now.
Inside, my life is smaller than the one they chose.
Closer.
Truer.
They left to feel free.
I became free the moment I realized I didn’t have to go with them.
