Everyone liked her. She hadn't lived at the trailer park three months before the whole place thought of her as granma.
If someone was ill she was there with chicken soup. If a kid was sick and couldn't be taken to child care, she would stay with the child so the mother wouldn't miss work. People really liked her.
Her trailer was an old single wide but inside it was spotless and snug with floral print curtains and upholstery. If you dropped by there were always home made cookies in a flowered tin and tea. If anyone noticed that she received no mail, no visitors, they thought little of it.
She loved to show her photos. Fading grey pictures of a young couple standing by a 1936 Ford or holding a bonneted, scowling child.
``That's me,'' she'd say.
A faded color photo of a little boy with a blond crew cut sitting in a blue plastic bucket. A child, mostly out of the picture, is spraying water from a garden hose on him. He is laughing, little arms raised.
``My Bobby,'' she'd say, ``Bobby left us when he was seventeen.'' If no one asked she would continue, ``Overdose. He didn't know what he was doing.'' Then silence would sift down as Bobby slowly continued to fade. There were other children - nieces and nephews and two daughters. She'd tell you about each of them. She was so proud.
When she had a stroke people did what they had to. Got her to the hospital. She couldn't speak.
``She has two daughters,'' they told the admitting clerk, but they could find no address.
She was transferred to a care center and after a few days she could speak a little. It took a while but the truth began to appear. She had no family. She'd been in prison forty years for killing her children. The pictures all came from an album she found in a junk shop the day she got out.