My heart skipped a beat at that. Caleb was the new boy in her class. He and Emma had become friends, but I had no idea his family was in such a difficult situation.
“So I started saving,” she said. “Birthday money, chore money, the snack money you gave me, everything. It took a few months, but I bought him a new pair of sneakers.”
I was so proud of her. After everything we’d been through, it was a relief to know my daughter hadn’t lost her kind and sensitive spirit like I’d once feared she would.
“I bought him a new pair of sneakers.”
My husband, Joe, had died three years earlier, a short while after his business collapsed.
There’d been a scandal. People questioned whether the bad decision he made that ruined the business had been part of some corrupt deal.
The stress had been too much for Joe. He had a heart attack.
But even then, the whispers didn’t stop. If anything, they became nastier.
His former business partner had even released a statement to quell the rumors surrounding Joe’s death.
His words haunted me for years.
There’d been a scandal.
I could still remember his calm composure as he answered questions about the “convenient timing” of Joe’s death, and how coolly Daniel had asserted that the stress and guilt Joe felt likely caused his heart attack.
