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.”

“Did you ever wonder how I was managing?” I asked.

“Every day.”

“Then why didn’t you call me?”

He had no answer.

I thought about the children who had cried themselves to sleep. I thought about Miles, carrying a secret he’d never been old enough to handle.

And I remembered Romy asking me whether her mother would have liked the dress she’d worn to her first school dance.

“You let your children believe you were gone,” I said. “You let me bury you.”

Silas began apologizing again.

I listened for a few moments before telling him I couldn’t continue the conversation.

“I need to think about my grandchildren now.”

After I hung up, I sat at the table until Romy came downstairs.

She didn’t ask what he’d said.

She simply pulled out a chair and sat beside me.

Eventually, we told the rest of the family.