Megan’s attitude shifted first. “Would it be alright if you helped?” became “Can you handle this?” and finally, politeness gone entirely, “I need you to do this.”
Todd changed too. He stopped expressing gratitude. He simply expected everything to get done.
One afternoon, I walked past their bedroom and overheard Megan through the half-open door.
“Your mother doesn’t pay a penny to live here, Todd. We’re paying the mortgage, the bills, the food. Everything.”
I stood silently, waiting for my son to mention the afternoons I spent with his children. The dinners I made. The laundry I folded. All the weight I had lifted off their shoulders.
Instead, he sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
That was all. No defense. No mention of anything I did. He simply agreed with her.
Those two words stayed with me for a long time.
What none of them knew was that three months before that dinner, I had stopped at a gas station after a routine doctor’s appointment, and on a whim, I bought a lottery ticket.
