I sat beside him on his bed. Lily was already asleep in the lower bunk, one arm hanging over the edge.
“No. Adults can be angry and still not be right.”
He thought about that. “I didn’t like how Aunt Vanessa talked to us.”
“I know.”
“She talks like we’re poor because we did something bad.”
My throat tightened.
“We are not bad because we have less money,” I said. “We are not less important because our apartment is smaller. We are not leftovers.”
Noah looked at me for a long time.
Then he nodded.
The Snack Shelf
In March, I enrolled both children in counseling through a community family center.
Noah talked about getting stomachaches before visits to my parents’ house. Lily admitted she used to hide snacks in her backpack after Sunday dinners because she was afraid Grandma might forget to feed her.
When the counselor told me that, I cried in the parking lot for twenty minutes.
Then I went home and cleared out one kitchen cabinet. I filled it with granola bars, crackers, fruit cups, and little cereal boxes. I wrote on a sticky note: Noah and Lily’s snack shelf. Always allowed.
Lily read it three times.
“Always?” she asked.
“Always.”
She hugged me so hard her forehead bumped my chin.
A Bigger Place
Spring arrived slowly in Ohio.
The snow turned to gray slush, then rain, then green lawns. I took extra weekend shifts, not because my father had threatened to stop helping me—he had never helped—but because I wanted a bigger place.
Nothing fancy. Just two bedrooms, maybe a small balcony, maybe a kitchen where the children could do homework while I cooked.
In May, Vanessa called from a number I did not recognize.
I answered because I thought it might be the school.
She did not greet me.
“Mom’s birthday is Saturday,” she said. “She’s miserable. Dad is impossible. The kids keep asking why you hate us.”
“I do not hate your children.”
“But you hate me?”
I looked out the window at Lily riding her scooter along the sidewalk while Noah timed her with my phone.
“I am done being your target,” I said.
