They hadn’t stopped caring. They’d been working two jobs, one of them in rubber boots.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” My voice cracked in the middle.
Ethan started to cry, quietly and with his whole face. “Because you would’ve made us stop.”
“Of course I would have made you stop skipping school!”
“We wanted to have more before your birthday,” Noah said. “You turn thirty-two in a few months. We wanted to give it to you then.”
I looked at the biscuit tin. “Enough for what, baby?”
“Tuition,” Ethan whispered.
The tears I’d been fighting finally spilled. “Sweetheart, this wouldn’t cover four years of college. Not even close.”
“We know,” Noah said quickly, like he’d rehearsed the line. “We looked it up. But we thought it could help you start. And I found some scholarships online, and Ethan was checking how much textbooks cost used.”
