I raised my 7 grandchildren alone after their parents’ funeral — 10 years later, my youngest granddaughter handed me a box and whispered, “Grandma, Mom and Dad didn’t die that night.”

I stared at him.

“And you believed him?”

“I was fifteen, Grandma. I wanted him to come back.”

His eyes filled with tears.

“He told me not to tell you because you might call the police. He said if that happened, we’d never see them again.”

I looked away.

Miles had been a child himself, frightened of losing his parents a second time.

But ten years had passed.

“Why didn’t you tell me when you got older?”

He began crying.

“Because every year it got harder. I kept thinking about how much you were working and how much you missed them. I knew what I’d done by keeping quiet, and I couldn’t bear to tell you.”

I sat there for a long time.

I loved my grandson, but I was angry with him.

Not because he’d believed his father as a frightened teenager, but because he’d allowed me to live with that grief for so many years.