By Emily Brooks • January 26, 2026 • Share
I’m 74, living in a nursing home my own grandson dumped me in after tricking me into selling my house for his “girlfriend’s surgery.” When I suddenly inherited a fortune years later and he came crawling back for “his share,” I handed him $50 and a message written across the bills that forced him to choose: a year working as a low-paid caregiver… or lose every penny forever.
My name is Gloria, I’m 74 years old, widowed for more than 20 years, and I never thought I would be telling this story about my own grandson. I raised Todd from the time he was 12, after his mother died bringing him into the world and his father disappeared into casinos and cheap motels.
I worked nights at a laundromat and cleaned offices on weekends so there would always be food, school clothes, and a warm bed waiting for him. “Todd’s my second chance at family,” I told my friend. “He’s my everything.”
Todd’s mother, my daughter Elaine, never got to hold him, never even opened her eyes after the doctors pulled him out. His father, Wayne, showed up to the funeral late, reeking of smoke and bad liquor, asking more about insurance money than about his own son. After that, he drifted away like a stain in a cheap shirt, harder to see but never really gone.
So when Todd’s behavior got wilder at twelve, when the school called about fights and stolen phones, the judge looked at me and asked, “Look, he needs help. Will you take him home and raise him properly?” I said yes without even thinking.
I moved Todd into my late husband’s house, the little brick place with the peeling white fence, and tried to give him the kind of steady life I had never really known myself. I cooked real dinners, checked his homework, sat up on the couch whenever he missed curfew. I went to every parent-teacher meeting, every game, even when he only rode the bench.
I told myself that love had to count for something, that effort could patch the holes addiction and grief had left inside both of our lives.
Somewhere between his 18th birthday and mine, Todd slipped out of my hands. He moved in with friends, then girlfriends, then people I never met. Text messages replaced real visits. He only showed up every few years for a quick drop-in that always felt like a drive-through order. I would have tea ready, his favorite cookies, something simmering on the stove, and a little wrapped gift waiting. Socks I had knitted, a scarf, a sweater that matched his eyes. He would smile, drop a shallow “thanks,” pocket the present, kiss my cheek, and leave before I could ask about anything.
Every time the door closed behind him, the house felt too big. I would wash his cup slowly, fold the paper napkin he never used, and tell myself he was just busy, that young people lived differently now.
“It’s because of the internet. Or maybe the city, or his friends,” I’d tell myself. Anything except the possibility that he simply didn’t care. I kept knitting, kept wrapping little things in leftover Christmas paper, kept a folder full of cards I never mailed. I spoke to his picture on the mantel more often than to the man himself sitting across from me in years now.
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