The police report sat half filled out on my kitchen table, and I\u2019d been staring at it for two hours, picking up the pen and putting it back down.<\/p>\n
The line that kept stopping me was the one asking for the suspect\u2019s name. Because the suspect was my grandson. Tyler. Nineteen years old.<\/p>\n
He took Frank\u2019s coins. Stole them right out of the cedar chest in my bedroom and pawned the whole collection for six hundred dollars. Fifty years my husband spent on those coins. Six hundred bucks.<\/p>\n
Frank passed two years ago this March. Heart, in his sleep, which I suppose is the kind way to go, but it sure didn\u2019t feel kind to me. The coins were the one thing of his I couldn\u2019t make myself put away. They lived in the chest at the foot of our bed.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a Mercury dime in there he found in his own daddy\u2019s cash drawer back in 1961. He\u00a0used<\/span>\u00a0to take it out and tell me the story like I hadn\u2019t heard it four hundred times. I always pretended I hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n So Tuesday, or it might\u2019ve been Wednesday, honestly the days ran together that week, my phone rings and it\u2019s Dale, who runs the pawn shop out on Route 9. Frank\u00a0used<\/span>\u00a0to jaw with him for hours about old coins.<\/p>\n \u201cBrenda,\u201d<\/span>\u00a0he says,\u00a0\u201ca young fella just came in with what looks like Frank\u2019s collection.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0He knew. He recognized the little blue folders Frank kept them in.<\/p>\n Then he tells me the catch. He can hold them, but only if there\u2019s a police report on file by Friday. Otherwise the law says he can put them out for sale, and they\u2019re gone. Gone for good.<\/p>\n I drove out there and the second I opened those folders I knew.<\/p>\n The Mercury dime was right where it always sat, top left slot. I about went down on Dale\u2019s floor.<\/p>\n I called my daughter Karen on the way home, and that\u2019s when it got ugly. She already knew. Tyler had told her he\u00a0\u201cborrowed\u201d<\/span>\u00a0them. Borrowed.<\/p>\n \u201cMama, please don\u2019t do this,\u201d<\/span>\u00a0she said.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019ll follow him forever. He\u2019s nineteen. He made a mistake.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0She was crying before I even got a word in.<\/p>\n I told her a mistake is backing into a mailbox. This was him walking into my bedroom, into my chest, and carrying Frank out the door in a grocery bag.<\/p>\n My son Greg came by that night. He stood in my kitchen looking at that report and he didn\u2019t sugarcoat one thing.\u00a0\u201cMa, if this was some neighbor kid, you\u2019d have called the cops Tuesday.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He\u2019s right. I would have. That\u2019s the part that\u2019s been eating me. The only reason I was sitting there frozen was the boy\u2019s last name.<\/p>\n And Tyler? He still hadn\u2019t called. Hadn\u2019t texted. Karen finally got him on the phone and put it on speaker so I could hear, and I wish to God she hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not like Grandpa was using them,\u201d<\/span>\u00a0he said. Like that settled it. Like Frank being dead made them belong to nobody.<\/p>\n \u201cYou never even look at them, Grandma,\u201d<\/span>\u00a0he goes.\u00a0\u201cThey just sit there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I asked him if he was sorry. There was this long quiet. Then,\u00a0\u201cI needed the money.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0Not sorry. Never once sorry.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the part that finally moved my hand. Not the stealing. The not-sorry.<\/p>\n Friday morning I drove to the station and I filed it. Full name. Tyler James. I wrote it slow so I wouldn\u2019t have to do it twice.<\/p>\n Karen hasn\u2019t spoken to me since. She says I\u00a0\u201cchose coins over my own blood.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0Greg says it\u2019s the best thing anybody ever did for that boy and somebody should\u2019ve done it twenty years ago.<\/p>\n So now the family\u2019s split clean down the middle, and they\u2019re all waiting on me to say which side is right. I honestly don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the part nobody agrees on. When the prosecutor called, I told him I\u2019d ask for no jail time. Probation. He\u2019s a kid, and jail makes kids worse, I believe that to my bones.<\/p>\n On one condition. The charge stays on his record. I would not ask them to wipe it clean. Karen begged me to get it erased so it wouldn\u2019t wreck his shot at jobs, and I said no.<\/p>\n \u201cHe needs to feel it for a while,\u201d<\/span>\u00a0I told her.\u00a0\u201cNot forever. But a while.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n She called me\u00a0cruel<\/span>. Greg called me soft for keeping him out of a cell. I\u2019m apparently both, depending who you ask at the family dinner I\u2019m no longer invited to.<\/p>\n The coins came home. Dale wouldn\u2019t take a dime for holding them, and that made me cry harder than the whole rest of it put together.<\/p>\n They\u2019re back in the cedar chest. All except one. I pulled the Mercury dime out, and it\u2019s in my coat pocket right now. Been there a month.<\/p>\n Tyler owes me the six hundred. He\u2019s paying it back at fifty a week. Comes by on Sundays, leaves the cash on the porch rail, and is gone before I get the door open. We don\u2019t talk. He\u2019s still never said the word sorry.<\/p>\n When he\u2019s done paying, that dime is going to him. I already decided. I haven\u2019t told him. I don\u2019t even know if he\u2019ll understand what it is when he gets it, or that his great-great-grandaddy\u2019s hands touched it in 1961.<\/p>\n I keep rubbing it in my pocket the way Frank\u00a0used<\/span>\u00a0to. Some nights I\u2019m dead sure I did right. Some nights I sit at that table where the report was, and I\u2019m not sure of one single thing.<\/p>\n The police report sat half filled out on my kitchen table, and I\u2019d been staring at it for two hours, picking up the pen and putting it back down. The … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-5063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story-of-life","tag-family","tag-friend","tag-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5063"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5065,"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5063\/revisions\/5065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}End of story .<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"