strawberry shampoo my mother bought at the dollar store. He let me hold him longer than he usually does.
Ezoic“I love you more than all the stars,” I whispered.
“There are like a billion stars,” he said into my shoulder.
“More than that,” I said.
Nolan’s birthday was in September, four months before the hearing.
EzoicI wanted to give him something special. Something that would make him feel like a regular kid, not a kid whose mom cried in the bathroom with the water running so he wouldn’t hear.
But I didn’t have anything left to give.
Except my grandmother’s locket.
It was gold, shaped like an oval, with a tiny engraved rose on the front. My grandmother Eleanor wore it every day of her life. Inside were two photographs, cut by hand to fit. My grandmother and grandfather on their wedding day in 1952.
She gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday. She told me it would remind me that love can last a very long time.
EzoicIt was the last valuable thing I owned.
I took
