Most afternoons, I picked up my ten-year-old granddaughter, Nell, from school. I grew tomatoes behind my little yellow house, baked too much banana bread, and carried tissues, peppermints, and spare hair ties wherever I went.
To a stranger, I probably looked harmless.
What people could not see was the life I had survived before my hands became wrinkled.
My first husband left in 1994.
He walked out on a rainy Tuesday morning while our three children were eating cereal. He took one suitcase, the better car, and nearly every dollar in our account.
My oldest child was five. The youngest had just turned two.
For years, I worked before sunrise cleaning offices, then spent my afternoons packing machine parts at a factory. My fingers cracked from cleaning chemicals. My back ached from standing beneath fluorescent lights for ten-hour shifts.
There were nights when I ate toast for dinner because the children needed the last of the meat.
