The money I had been carefully saving for my husband’s eye surgery kept disappearing. When I finally asked my six-year-old son about it, he calmly told me he had been giving it to “Granny.” The problem was, I grew up in foster care—and the woman he described wasn’t my mother-in-law. I decided to set up a camera, but nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to discover.
The first time I noticed the money was missing, I assumed I had made a mistake.
I was sitting in my home office, going over bills spread across my desk. I had been slowly putting money aside for my husband Mark’s surgery, and when I counted it, I realized we were $20 short.
I checked the envelope again, thinking I might have overlooked a bill.
Nothing.
I counted once more, taking my time this round.
Still short.
Maybe I had remembered the total wrong, I told myself. I let out a quiet sigh, wrote down the new amount on a small slip of paper, and placed it back inside the envelope along with the cash.
Then I returned the envelope to its usual hiding place.
We had three weeks left.
That was all the time we had before what doctors called “possible vision loss” in Mark’s eye could turn into something permanent.
Insurance wasn’t covering enough. We needed to pay for the procedure upfront. For months, I had been doing everything I could—cutting back on expenses, selling things around the house, and picking up extra work.
And it was working.
If I stayed consistent, we would have just enough in time.
I just needed to be more careful with the counting.
So I went about my evening. I made dinner, sat with my son Joseph while he worked on his little wooden puzzle, and tried to convince myself everything would be okay.
The next time I checked the envelope…
Another $50 was gone.