“I think she took everything,” my grandson Toby sobbed, his voice breaking as he sat at my kitchen table in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

He was 18 now. His face was thin, his hands were red and chapped from working at a warehouse, and he looked nothing like the happy 12-year-old who had been taken from this house.

In his shaking hands, he held his grandfather’s silver pocket watch. He popped the back casing and slid a folded, blue-bordered paper toward me.

The silver pocket watch was the only thing Arthur left behind that Toby truly cared about. Arthur was my late husband. He died of lung c*ncer when Toby was only 8.

It was a heavy, sterling silver watch with a small engraving of a train on the cover. Toby used to sit on Arthur’s lap in the living room, pressing his ear against the metal to listen to the slow, steady ticking. Arthur would whisper that it was the sound of time, telling him it never stopped and never lied.

Arthur had worked 40 years as a machinist for the railroad. He wasn’t a rich man, but he was careful.

We lived in a modest 3-bedroom house on Maple Street. We grew our own tomatoes in the backyard, clipped coupons from the local paper, and drove a rusty Buick LeSabre until the floorboards were near falling through.

But Arthur had a secret. He had saved a 250,000 dollar trust fund for Toby’s college education. He set it up so that I was the sole trustee.

We raised Toby from the time he was 2. My son Gregory had married Misty when they were young and reckless. Gregory never wanted a child. When Toby was born, Gregory looked at him like he was an expensive mistake. Misty wasn’t any better.

1 night, when Toby was 2, Misty walked out. Gregory brought Toby to my house in a dirty car seat with a single bag of diapers.

He told me he couldn’t do it anymore, then left, and I didn’t see him again for 5 years.

Toby became my world. I taught him how to read. We baked cookies. We walked to the park. Every Saturday, I would give him 3 quarters for his blue piggy bank. He was a sweet, quiet boy who never asked for much. He just wanted to be safe.