And my fifteen-year-old sons had built it out of five-dollar bills.
“Why?” I asked. It was the only word I could find. “Why would you do this?”
Noah looked at his brother. They have a way of doing that, a silent conversation that has gone on since before they could talk. Then he looked at me, and his chin wobbled.
“Because we wanted you to go to college, Mom.”
The words landed somewhere beneath my ribs and stayed there.
“What are you talking about?” I whispered.
Ethan wiped his nose on the sleeve of his flannel. “We know what you gave up because of us.”
Kevin pulled a dining chair closer and eased me onto it, because apparently my knees had stopped working. “There’s more you need to hear, sweetheart. Let them tell it.”
So they did, and I learned how long this had been going on.
Almost a year earlier, Noah and Ethan had been digging through the storage closet at the top of the stairs. Their health teacher had assigned a project called Me at Age One, and they needed baby pictures. Instead of photographs, they found a gray accordion folder that I had pushed behind the Christmas ornaments.
