Chapter 7 - The Yellow DinosaurWe met near the large fountain in the center of the park. When my sweet grandson spotted me on a wooden bench, he let go of his mother's hand and ran toward me. "Grandma!" he cheered, wrapping his little arms around my neck.
I held him tight and cried softly into his hair. It was the first time I'd cried since walking out of the supermarket. But these weren't tears of humiliation or anger. They were love.
"Why did you move away from our house, Grandma?" he asked innocently.
Priscilla watched nervously from a few feet away. I would never use a child as a weapon against his mother.
"Because Grandma needed to live in her very own small home, sweetheart," I explained gently.
"Were you mad at me?"
"Never in my whole life, my sweet boy."
I pulled the little yellow plastic dinosaur from my coat pocket and placed it in his hand. "I kept this safe for you the entire time."
Desmond beamed. For the next two hours, he ran across the grass, ate vanilla ice cream, and told me everything about his third-grade class. Priscilla sat quietly beside us.
Before leaving, she reached into her purse and handed me a plain white envelope. Inside was five hundred dollars in cash.
"It is not much compared to what we took, Mom," she said softly, looking down at her hands. "But I am going to start paying you back every single month."
I looked at the envelope, then at her.
"Do not make promises you cannot realistically keep, Priscilla."
"It is not an empty promise," she insisted. "I got a real job working as an administrative assistant at a dental office starting Monday."
Priscilla had finally stopped depending entirely on Roland's income. She had also sold several designer handbags and luxury items purchased with my house money.
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I didn't shower her with praise. I simply accepted the envelope. It was not instant forgiveness. It was a small step toward responsibility.
Our relationship would never return to what it had been. Some wounds heal into permanent scars.
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