Parent and child arguments can cut deep, but few hit harder than when affection turns into accounting. A father supporting his daughter through post-college life suddenly finds himself questioning the entire arrangement after one blow-up about a messy kitchen. In the middle of it, his daughter throws out the kind of line you can’t unhear, telling him not to expect her to care for him in old age. It sounds impulsive, but her words linger longer than the argument itself. He starts rethinking the thousand dollars he sends her every month and wonders if it might be wiser to save it for a future where he depends on no one.