3: 3
3
I didn't get my three days.
That very night, Jim sat waiting at the preschool until seven-thirty.
The teacher couldn't reach either parent, so she called me.
By the time I got there, he was alone in the security booth, nose red from crying.
"Grandma, Mommy said you'd come get me."
Lucia knew I'd said I wouldn't pick him up, and she dumped him on me anyway.
I couldn't leave a four-year-old standing at the curb.
When we got home, the two of them still weren't back.
The fridge held two cups of yogurt and half a bottle of red wine.
I made Jim a bowl of noodles.
The second I turned on the stove, my phone buzzed.
Lucia had watched it through the camera in the house.
"Mom, the stove runs thirty cents a minute. You used twelve minutes. Don't forget to pay three-sixty."
I hung up.
Past nine, the two of them came in reeking of a night out.
Abner saw the boy and acted like nothing had happened.
"Told you my mom would never really leave him hanging."
Lucia pointed her phone at me and filmed.
"Mom, weren't you charging everyone for everything? How come you picked him up? Your mouth says one thing, your body does another."
I carried Jim into the bedroom.
Early the next morning, I left, dragging my suitcase.
Lucia didn't stop me.
She stood on the balcony filming me, set it to sad music, and posted it online.
The title was 《Mother-in-law resents raising her own grandson without pay, abandons four-year-old and walks out》.
In the clip, I had my head down, dragging the case.
The part where she demanded seven thousand eight hundred, the part where they dumped the kid at preschool, all of it cut out.
By that day it had passed five hundred thousand views.
People tracked down my account.
Some called me a useless old hag who should've died already.
Some said I'd seized my son's marriage home, freeloading off them and still demanding a salary.
Someone even took an old photo of me from my textile-mill days and turned it into a black-and-white funeral portrait, captioned "The wicked old bat, the sooner she's gone the better."
Lucia went live and cried.
"I really didn't mistreat my mother-in-law. I only pushed for fairness, everyone in the family sharing the load, and she decided a daughter-in-law had no right to set rules."
Abner sat beside her, sighing.
"My mom's always been controlling. She paid for our wedding and found us a place so she'd have a hold over us later."
People in the room were sending them gifts.
Lucia cried for two hours, and the family storage bins in her shop sold over a thousand orders.
I finally understood.
Those payment codes were never just about squeezing a few dollars out of me.
She was manufacturing conflict.
The more humiliated I looked, the more traffic her account pulled.
That evening I went to the bank to check my account.
Eighty thousand was missing from my pension card.
Abner had set up mobile banking for me a while back, tied to his own number.
The money had gone into Lucia's account three hours earlier, memo: "Household expenses, back payment."
I called Abner.
"You transferred my money?"
"Mom, that's not your money. That's what you owe us."
"Transfer it back."
"Lucy's pregnant with our second. She needs a new car. You're the grandmother, what's wrong with putting in eighty thousand?"
I gripped the phone, my knuckles white.
"Who gave you permission to touch my card?"
"I'm your son! When you're sick, when you're old, when it's time to bury you, who else are you going to lean on? So I spent a little early, what's the problem?"
On the other end, Lucia said loudly, on purpose:
"Tell her, if she wants the money she can come back and apologize, and sign the guarantee to take care of the second baby."
Abner was quiet for a few seconds.
"Mom, Lucy's giving you a way out too. Don't push away the last family you've got."
I hung up and reported the card lost right away.
Then I called Maud.
She heard me out, and asked only one thing.
"Olive, how many more times are you planning to clean up his mess?"
I looked at the statement the bank had printed for me.
"This is the last."
