“Aunt Elena, my boots don’t fit.”
I looked at the calendar.
Three days until payday.
“I’ll figure something out.”
That afternoon, I sold the gold bracelet Grant had given me on our first anniversary.
By dinnertime, Macy had warm winter boots.
She threw both arms around me so tightly I almost cried into my soup.
Across the table, Noah stared at my wrist.
“Aunt Elena?”
“Yes?”
“Where’s your bracelet?”
I looked down at the empty place where it had always been.
“Oh.”
I forced a smile.
“I put it somewhere safe.”
Noah nodded.
He did not ask again.
WILLOW LANE
More years passed.
Birthdays.
School concerts.
Report cards covering the refrigerator.
Shoes outgrown faster than I could replace them.
Eventually, after saving every extra dollar I could find, we moved out of the apartment.
We rented a tiny house on Willow Lane in Bellmere.
It had a backyard barely large enough for a picnic table.
The children reacted as though I had bought them an estate.
To them, that patch of grass was a park.
And yesterday, we decorated it for Noah’s eighteenth birthday.
He had graduated from high school one month earlier.
