I had already buried my husband; I refused to bury my grandson’s childhood too. Billy’s discovery about my son and daughter-in-law felt like a second widowhood—this time, mourning the people I thought they were. But Timmy’s fear-filled eyes, his shaky handwriting on that paper plane, anchored me. I chose him. I chose the truth, no matter how much it hurt.
When social services stepped in, the house that had once held birthday cakes and Christmas mornings became a crime scene in my mind. My son and his wife went to prison, and the courts placed Timmy in my care. Our first night together, he slept with that same paper plane under his pillow, as if it were a lifeline. At seventy-one, I relearned motherhood: school runs, nightmares, whispered questions about “why.” We are both healing, slowly. Love, it turns out, can be rebuilt from wreckage.
