MOM MIGHT NOT have that many letters after her name (or any letters after her name), and she’s not a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon, she doesn’t work for NASA, hasn’t invented a theory about the space–time continuum, can’t solve difficult math problems or speak eighteen languages while writing computer code, but here’s the thing: Mom knows stuff.

Moms always know what to do and it always seems to work out somehow. It sometimes makes no kind of sense whatsoever, but at the same time it makes perfect sense.

So, anyway, the half a mill was still only a maybe, but it was a maybe from Frost DeAndrews, Sydney’s greatest art critic.

It was a chance.