“Mom, Starting Next Month, We’ll Transfer All Your Money To My Account.” My Son Said That, And I Just Smiled. That Night, As Always, He Came With His Wife For A Free Dinner.

A card with a balance of $3,000. $3,000 in purchases that I hadn’t made at stores I had never been in. I called the credit card bank.

I asked them when the account had been opened. They told me it was 18 months ago. I asked them if they could tell me where the purchases had been made.

They gave me a list. hardware stores, electronics stores, home furniture stores. Lawrence had bought a house two years ago.

Lawrence had renovated that house, and apparently Lawrence had used my credit to do it. I sat on the floor of my bedroom, surrounded by papers, feeling like everything I had believed about my life was falling apart. It wasn’t just the money.

It was the betrayal. It was knowing that my son had been stealing from me for years, that he had seen me as an unlimited source of resources, that he had never intended to take care of me or protect me. I cried.

I cried until I had no more tears. And then I wiped my face, gathered all the papers, and made a decision. I wasn’t going to confront him yet.

I wasn’t going to yell at him or complain because I knew that if I did, he would deny everything. He would say I was confused. He would say I was scenile.

He would say anything to make me doubt my own memory, my own sanity. No. I was going to be smarter than that.

I was going to collect proof. I was going to document everything. I was going to build a case so solid that he couldn’t deny it.

And then, only then, would I act. That Friday, Lawrence came back as always at dinnertime, as always, expecting me to have food ready. But this time, I had cooked something different.

I had made his favorite dish. Chicken with sauce and rice. The same dish I used to make for him when he was a little boy and came home from school feeling sad, the dish that told him how much I loved him without needing words.

He sat down at the table with his wife. They ate. They talked about superficial things.

Work, the weather, the new movie they wanted to see. I watched them. I watched them as if I were seeing them for the first time.

And I realized something. I realized that Lawrence ate my food with the same indifference with which he would eat a fast food burger. There was no gratitude in his eyes.

There was no love. There was only the mechanical act of eating something for free. When they finished, Lawrence took out the bank papers again.

He put them on the table right next to his empty plate. “Mom, the days you asked for have passed. You’ve thought about it, right?

sign this and I’ll take care of everything.”

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