When I handed my grandson and his bride a handmade gift at their lavish wedding, she held it up and laughed in front of 400 guests. I turned to leave in humiliation, but then someone grabbed my hand so hard I gasped. What happened next shook everyone.
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I live alone now in the little house at the end of Lincoln Street. My husband, Walter, built it with his own hands back in 1963, and I can still see him hammering away on summer afternoons, his shirt soaked through with sweat and his smile wide as the sky. He’s been gone almost 20 years, and my son, Richard, passed from cancer a decade later.
So now it’s just me and Ethan, my grandson. He’s all I’ve got left in this world, and he’s enough.
Richard’s widow remarried after the funeral and moved down to Florida with her new husband. Ethan was 16 then, caught between childhood and whatever comes after, and she asked if he could stay with me through high school. I practically begged her to let him.
Those were good years. I made his breakfast every morning, packed his lunch with little notes tucked inside, and watched him grow from a gangly boy into a man who opened doors for strangers and called me just to check in. He got himself through college, became an architect, and stayed humble through all of it.
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