Then came the years that taught me what the word tired really means. I waited tables at the Maple Leaf Diner on double shifts. On weekends I scrubbed other people’s bathrooms in the nice part of town while the twins napped in a playpen in the corner of somebody else’s laundry room.
Some nights I ate toast so they could have a full plate of spaghetti. I finished high school through an evening program with a baby on each knee, and I never once regretted keeping them.
Now Ethan set the biscuit tin on the coffee table in front of me. His hands were shaking so badly the lid rattled.
“Mom,” Noah said, barely audible, “please don’t be mad until you see it.”
And Ethan lifted the lid.
Part 2: Three Thousand Eight Hundred Dollars
Money.
Not a little money, either. Bundles of it, stacked on their sides and wrapped in rubber bands. Fives, tens, twenties. Some bills were folded in careful quarters, others were soft and curled as if they’d lived in a sweaty pocket for weeks.
