So I made you pay me, so I could pay him. It was the only way I could think of to do it without you stopping me.”
Chapter 3: Why It Had to Be Cash
Everything made sense then. Every strange detail rearranged itself into love.
The cash — because she didn’t want a paper trail I might notice, didn’t want me seeing deposits and asking questions before the box was full. She wanted it to be a surprise. She wanted, I understood, for Caleb to open that box someday, from her, and know his grandmother had been thinking about his whole life even as hers was ending.
The exact forty dollars, every time, regardless of how long she had him — because it was never really a fee. It was a ritual. A way to move money from my hand, which wouldn’t accept help, to Caleb’s future, which she couldn’t stop herself from providing. Four hours or ninety minutes didn’t matter, because she wasn’t charging for hours. She was charging for the privilege of loving him a little longer, and banking the love where I couldn’t refuse it.
The night at the wedding, when she made me hand over the hundred and gave me sixty back in exact change — she couldn’t let a single visit go unbanked, because she was racing a clock she hadn’t told me about. Every forty dollars was another brick in something she was building for a boy she wouldn’t get to watch grow up.
