every other weekend for about two months. Then less.
At first, Grant promised we could handle money privately.
“No need for lawyers,” he told me. “They’ll just eat up everything. I’ll take care of you guys. I promise.”
He sent a check the first month. A smaller one the second month. In the third month, nothing.
EzoicI texted him. He didn’t answer. I called. It went to voicemail. When I finally reached him, he said business was slow and he’d make it up next month.
He never did.
My mother,
Ruth, moved in with us that spring.
She was sixty-one and had just retired from thirty years as a seamstress at a uniform company. She sold her little house in Maryville and moved into our cramped two-bedroom apartment above Kessler’s Bakery on Magnolia Avenue. She slept on a pull-out couch in the living room and never once complained.
“You need help,” she said, when I tried to argue. “And I need something to do besides watch game shows.”
EzoicI worked two jobs.
From five in the morning until one in
