The doors of the VFW hall opened at our fiftieth anniversary, and in walked a woman who looked a great deal like Brandon, and a Franklin County sheriffs deputy. The woman walked straight to my husbands wheelchair, said she was Brandons mother and that she was sorry, and then she turned around and said, Brandon. You have never had a DUI. There is no settlement. Tell them where the money went. Or I will.
Brandon had told our granddaughter Hailey that he got a DUI and needed five thousand dollars in bail, with a settlement coming that would pay it all back. Hailey believed him and asked her grandfather, and my Roy, who served thirty years in the Navy and cannot get into a Honda Civic anymore, handed over the down payment for his wheelchair van.
There was no DUI. There was no settlement. Brandons own mother had come to say so to his face, because she had watched him do this before and could not watch it again.
He said Roy does not really go anywhere, Hailey can drive him. Roy cannot get into Haileys car. That is the entire reason we needed the van.
The deputy was there because Brandons inventions had caught up with him in more places than our family. Faced with his mother and a badge in the same room, Brandon admitted the money had gone to gambling debts, and a repayment agreement was put in writing on the spot, with the deputy as witness.
Hailey cried, and then she stood up straighter than I had seen her stand in a year. She is done with Brandon. That alone was worth the party.
Between Brandons restitution and a collection the VFW took up when they heard a Navy man needed a ramp, we had the wheelchair van within a month. A used one, with a lift, so Roy can get to his doctor and to church and to the water to watch the boats.
Roy wore his dress blues to our anniversary. He looked like the sailor I married fifty years ago. He rolled himself up the new ramp the first day it came, turned around at the top, and saluted me. I will never forget it.