My sister is 33 and raising three kids on her own. Different dads, different stories, but the same struggle. I babysat for her four times a week, unpaid, because the kids are innocent and she needed the help.
One afternoon, her five-year-old tugged on my shirt and said, “Auntie, I saw Mommy hiding your shiny money box under the couch.”
I almost laughed. Kids say strange things when their imagination kicks in. But he looked so serious that something inside me tightened. The only “shiny money box” in this house was my silver cash tin—my car savings—hidden deep in my closet. I’d been saving for over a year. No one knew where it was.