Following my husband’s passing, my world turned upside down. Living on my own at 71 wasn’t an easy thing to get used to. Only the thought of me being there for my grandson gave me hope that life could be bearable again.

Sadly, out of the blue, I was cut from his life. My daughter-in-law insisted I shouldn’t be seeing my grandson, Timmy, any longer.

One day, I knocked on their door. When my DIL opened it, she screamed at me. “Margaret, you are no longer welcome here. Timmy doesn’t want you either. Just go away.”

My heart broke in to a million pieces. But just as I turned around and tried to leave, Timmy called my name. He was at the window of his room.

“Grandma, catch this,” he yelled as he threw a paper plane towards me.

I grabbed the paper plane and held to it as to something sacred. But then I opened it and froze. There was a message written on it with Timmy’s untidy handwriting.

“Grandma, please help me. I’m not safe. Don’t tell mom and dad.”

Those words made my blood chill. I wondered what was going on behind closed doors.

I couldn’t sleep that night, thinking of Timmy and of the things that bothered him.

Not knowing what to do, I decided to visit his home late into the night, entering through the gate easily because of the broken latch my late husband once tried to fix.

I called Timmy’s name, and suddenly, there he was. “Grandma, what are you doing here?” he asked.

“Timmy, you need to tell me what’s wrong.”

Timmy then told me that his parents fought a lot, and that there was a man who visited the house every day. They were yelling at each other and wouldn’t stop fighting. He just wanted out of there, and I felt completely hopeless.

The following day, I contacted Billy, a retired cop and a close friend of my late husband. I told him about the message on the paper plane, and he promised to try and learn if my son and DIL were in some sort of trouble.

Unfortunately, the news was awful. Billy used his connections at the police to learn that my son was part of drugs investigation, while my DIL was involved with some seriously dangerous people who were also charged with dealing drugs.

I couldn’t believe they would do such a thing. Not with their son in the house.

Billy suggested we contacted social services, and that’s exactly what I did.

They determined that Timmy was a witness of drug abuse, domestic violence, and other criminal activities, so he was taken out of the home.

I was granted temporary custody over him, and sadly, both my son and his wife ended up in prison.

Raising a child at my age wasn’t easy, but I had to do it, and I was more than willing to do so.

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