The Grandma Raised the Kids Since They Were Babies… Until a Stranger Appeared and Took Them !

The stars were still hanging over the jagged horizon of the New Mexico desert when Mary first stirred in her narrow bed. Her body did not need an alarm clock. It had been tuned by decades of hardship and the rhythmic demands of survival in a land that gave nothing for free. She sat up slowly, feeling the familiar ache in her lower back.

 A quiet reminder of 10 years spent carrying the weight of two growing children on her own. The room was cool, the dry desert air creeping through the cracks of the weathered wooden walls, but she knew that in a few hours the sun would turn the sand into a furnace. She reached for her worn shawl, wrapping it tightly around her shoulders as she stepped onto the creaking floorboards, her movements careful not to wake the two small souls sleeping in the next room.

 Outside, the silence of the high desert was absolute, broken only by the occasional scuttle of a lizard or the distant, lonely howl of a coyote. Mary stepped into the kitchen, a small space that smelled of dried chilies and old wood, and began the ritual of the morning. She walked out to the small makeshift coupe behind the house, where four thin hens were already beginning to rustle in the dirt.

 The wire fence was rusted, and the wooden posts were silvered by the sun, but it was the heart of her tiny economy, the source of the few cents that kept them afloat. She spoke to the birds in a low melodic murmur, calling them her little ladies as she reached into the nesting boxes to find three eggs, one still warm with the heat of life.

 These eggs were more than food, and they were the currency she traded at the small general store 5 mi down the dirt road for salt, lard, and the occasional bag of sugar for the children’s porridge. Her hands, calloused and mapped with deep lines of labor, cradled the eggs with a gentleness that seemed impossible for someone who had worked so hard.

 She looked toward the east, where a thin sliver of pale gold was beginning to bleed into the indigo sky, and she felt a familiar tightening in her chest. It was the same feeling she had every morning for 10 years. A mixture of gratitude for another day and a lingering ghostly fear that the piece she had built out of dust and sweat was far more fragile than it appeared.

Returning inside, Mary paused before a small tarnished silver frame that sat on the mantle above the cold fireplace. In the photograph, a young woman named Ellen smiled with a brightness that seemed to defy the harsh landscape behind her. Her dark hair when blown and her eyes full of a wild, uncontainable hope.

Mary traced the edge of the glass with her thumb. A silent prayer whispered into the stillness of the house, asking for strength and for the protection of the daughter who had vanished into the night 10 years ago. In the room next door, the twins were beginning to stir. The soft sounds of their waking, a comfort that Mary cherished more than any wealth.

 Ivy was the first to sit up, her long hair tangled, and her expression already sharp with the precocious intelligence that often made Mary uneasy. Next to her, Sam remained huddled under the thin blanket, his fingers curled around a charcoal pencil and a sketchbook that was falling apart at the seams. On the open page was a drawing of a woman’s face, an image Sam had reconstructed from a thousand half-remembered dreams and the stories Mary told him when the nights were too quiet.

10 years had passed since the night Ellen arrived at the door, her clothes torn and her spirit shattered, carrying a burden that she could not explain. Mary remembered the way the rain had lashed against the desert floor that night. A rare and violent storm that seemed to signal the end of the world as she knew it.

 Ellen had stayed only long enough to bring the twins into the world, her eyes filled with a desperate, haunted look every time a car drove past the distant highway. She had tended to the infants with a ferocity that bordered on panic, holding them as if she expected them to be snatched away at any moment. On her whispers into their tiny ears filled with secrets Mary was never meant to hear.

 And then one morning the bed was empty, the room was cold, and a single note was left on the pillow. A frantic plea for Mary to hide the children and never look back. Mary had taken that note and buried it in a wooden box beneath her floorboards, a secret she guarded as fiercely as she guarded the children themselves, knowing that the truth was a fire that could consume them all.

The twins were now 10 years old, and the questions they asked were becoming harder to deflect with simple stories of a mother who had gone to find work in the big city. Ivy in particular had a way of looking at Mary that suggested she could see right through the layers of protective lies and her young mind constantly piecing together the fragments of the past.

 One afternoon, as the heat of the afternoon sun beat down on the corrugated tin roof, Ivy sat at the small kitchen table and watched her grandmother knead dough for tortillas. The girl’s eyes were fixed on the silver frame on the mantle, her voice quiet but steady when she asked why there were no pictures of Ellen holding them as babies.

 Mary felt a cold shiver despite the heat, her hands pausing for a fraction of a second before she resumed her work, her voice calm as she explained that they had been too poor for a camera in those days. But Ivy was not satisfied with the answer, pointing out that even the poorest neighbors had a few snapshots of their children, and the silence that followed was heavy with attention that Mary did not know how to break.

 Sam, on the other hand, lived in a world of light and shadow, his charcoal pencils his only defense against the harsh realities of their life in the desert. He spent hours sitting in the shade of the old coupe, sketching the way the light hit the maces or the delicate patterns of the cactus flowers that bloomed after the rare rains.

 He was a quiet boy, more sensitive than his sister, and he seemed to absorb the emotions of the house like a sponge, his drawings often reflecting the hidden anxieties that Mary tried so hard to mask. He often asked Mary if he looked like his father. a man whose name had never been spoken within the walls of their home.

 And Mary would only tell him that he had his mother’s eyes. It was a halftruth that Sam accepted because he had to. But the mystery of his heritage hung over him like a cloud. You a void in his identity that he tried to fill with the images he created on paper. The piece of their isolated life was a thin veil.

 And Mary knew that the world outside was never as far away as it seemed. She had heard rumors in the small town of Blue Mesa about strangers asking questions, men in expensive suits who did not belong in the dusty streets of a dying mining town. She had ignored the talk, telling herself it was just the idle gossip of people with nothing better to do, but the old instinct of a mother told her otherwise.

She spent her nights sitting on the porch, a shotgun resting across her lap, watching the twin beams of headlights on the distant highway, and wondering which one would finally turn toward their gate. The letter in the box beneath the floorboards seemed to pulse with a life of its own, a silent warning that the past was never truly dead, only waiting for the right moment to reclaim what it had lost.

 One evening, after the children had gone to bed, Mary pulled the wooden box from its hiding place and read the letter for the thousandth time. The paper was yellowed and brittle, the ink fading, but the words were as sharp as the day they were written. [clears throat] Forgive me, Mom. If I stay, I put everyone in danger. Keep them safe.

Don’t let him find them. Below those words was a name that Mary had never dared to say out loud, a name that belonged to a world of power and ruthlessness that she could barely imagine. She folded the paper with trembling hands and tucked it back into the box, her heart heavy with the knowledge that the wall she had built around her grandchildren was starting to crumble.

 She looked out at the vast uncaring desert and felt a sudden overwhelming sense of her own insignificance. A lone woman standing against a tide that she knew she could not stop forever. The storm arrived not with rain or thunder, but with the low, expensive hum of a powerful engine and a cloud of dust that rose like a signal fire on the horizon.

It was 10:00 in the morning, a Tuesday that started like any other. But as the black SUV pulled up to the gate of their small ranch, Mary felt the air go still. Two men stepped out of the vehicle, their suits a sharp, jarring contrast to the sunbleleached landscape and the humble adobe of the house.

 One was a man of middle age with a face like a hawk, sharp and calculating, carrying a leather briefcase that looked out of place in the dirt. The other was younger, taller, and with an air of effortless authority that commanded the space around him as if he owned the very air he breathed. This was David Miller, the man from the letter, the man who had spent 10 years searching for the pieces of his legacy that had been stolen away in the night.

 Mary stood her ground on the porch, her hands gripping the wooden railing until her knuckles turned white, her eyes narrowed as the men approached the house. David Miller stopped at the base of the steps, his gaze sweeping over the dilapidated coupe and the parched earth with a look of barely concealed disdain. He did not introduce himself, for he clearly felt that his presence required no explanation, and his voice was smooth and cold when he told Mary that he was there for his children.

 Behind him, the man with the briefcase, a lawyer named Parker, began to pull out a stack of documents, his movements clinical and devoid of emotion. They had acts of birth, declarations of paternity, and a court order from a judge in the city that Mary had never even visited. All of them stating with cold legal finality that the twins belonged to the man standing in her yard.

 Inside the house, Ivy and Sam were watching through the window, their faces pale and their eyes wide with a mixture of curiosity and terror. They had never seen a car like that, nor men who looked so polished and powerful, and the words they heard through the glass felt like a language from another planet. Sam clutched his sketchbook to his chest, his eyes fixed on the tall man in the blue suit, wondering if this was the father he had imagined in his drawings.

Ivy, however, felt a different sensation, a cold, a prickly fear that made the hair on her arms stand up, an instinctual recognition that this man was not a savior, but a predator. She watched as her grandmother stood tall against the two men, a small weathered woman who looked as if she were made of the same ancient stone as the maces, refusing to yield an inch of her porch.

The confrontation was brief but devastating, a collision between the world of money and the world of the heart. David Miller spoke of opportunities, of private schools in the city, of a life of luxury that Mary could never provide for the children. His words designed to sound like a promise while feeling like a threat.

Mary countered with the truth of 10 years of sacrifice, of the nights she had spent cooling their fevers, and the days she had spent working until her hands bled to keep them fed. But the law, says Parker, the lawyer, reminded her with a thin, joyless smile, did not care about sacrifices or the warmth of a grandmother’s love.

 It cared about bloodlines and legal standing. They left a folder of papers on the porch table, a countdown of 15 days until the children would be removed by force. And as the SUV drove away, Mary felt as if the very ground beneath her feet had turned to sand. Desperation drove Mary into the town of Blue Mesa the following morning, her old truck rattling as she navigated the 5 mi of Washboard Road.

 She went first to the general store, hoping that Arthur, a man she had known for 30 years, would have some advice or a lead on a lawyer who didn’t cost a fortune. But Arthur would not meet her eyes. His hands busy rearranging cans of beans as he told her that David Miller had already been through town making contributions to the local charities and speaking with the town council. The message was clear.

 The money had arrived before the trouble, and the people of Blue Mesa were not about to bite the hand that was suddenly feeding them. It was a betrayal that stung more than the desert wind, a realization that the community she had relied on for decades was as easily bought as a bag of grain. She then went to the sheriff’s office, hoping for the protection of the law she had always respected.

 But Sheriff Frank was no different. He sat behind his desk, a yellow envelope from Miller’s office sitting prominently on his blott, and told Mary that his hands were tied by the court order from the city, and he wouldn’t look at the photos of the children she tried to show him, nor would he listen to her please about David Miller’s past, his voice monotone as he recited the legal procedures.

Mary left the station with her head held high, refusing to let him see the tears that were stinging her eyes. But inside she felt a hollow, aching void. The world she knew had turned its back on her, and she was standing alone against a giant whose reach extended into every corner of her small life.

 Even the church provided no sanctuary. For Pastor Nick, a man who usually had a kind word for every soul, could only offer her prayers and a suggestion that perhaps the children would be better off with their father. He spoke of God’s plan and the importance of a father’s role, his words sounding hollow and rehearsed.

on as if he were trying to convince himself as much as her. Mary realized then that the power of David Miller was not just in his bank account, but in the way he could change the narrative of a person’s life with a single stroke of a pen. [clears throat] She walked out of the church and into the blinding midday sun, the heat reflecting off the pavement in shimmering waves, and felt a sudden, fierce determination to fight, even if she had to do it with nothing but her bare hands.

She spent the afternoon sitting on her porch, watching the twins play in the dirt, with a sense of impending loss that was almost physical. She thought of the eggs she had sold for $5 each. the pennies she had saved in a jar under the sink, and how pathetic it all seemed in the face of a man who could buy a whole town without blinking.

 But then she looked at Sam’s drawings and Ivy’s fierce, intelligent eyes, and she knew that she could not give up, not as long as there was breath in her body. She went inside and pulled the jar of savings from under the sink, counting out the $342 she had managed to scrape together over the years.

 It was a pittance, but it was all she had, and she decided that she would go to the city herself to find someone, anyone, who was not under the thumb of David Miller. On the third day, David Miller returned, but this time he came alone, his SUV, stopping quietly at the gate, as if he were a welcome guest. He did not approach the porch with the same aggression as before.

 Instead, he brought bags of gifts and expensive things that the children had only ever seen in magazines or on the television at the general store. He brought a set of professionalgrade colored pencils for Sam. A hundred different shades of vibrant color that made the boy’s eyes widen with a longing that was painful to watch.

 For Ivy, there was a doll with hair that felt like real silk and a dress of fine lace, a toy so beautiful it seemed to belong in a museum rather than a dusty ranch house. David sat on the edge of the porch, his voice soft and persuasive, talking to the children about the world that was waiting for them beyond the desert. A world of museums, parks, and endless possibilities.

Mary watched from the doorway, her heart breaking as she saw the way Sam’s fingers twitched with the desire to touch the pencils, the way he looked at David with a burgeoning, dangerous curiosity. She saw the wedge being driven into her family, a wedge made of silver and silk. And she realized that David was not just trying to win a legal battle.

 He was trying to win their hearts by showing them everything she couldn’t give. He spoke of his own childhood, a sanitized version of the truth that painted him as a lonely man who had finally found his way back to his family. his words dripping with a calculated false sincerity. He was a master of manipulation, and Mary could see the effects of his performance on Sam, whose need for a father was a hunger that no amount of grandmotherly love could ever fully satisfy.

Ivy, however, remained a fortress, her arms crossed over her chest as she stood several feet away from the gifts, her eyes fixed on David with a gaze that was cold and unwavering. See, she didn’t want the doll, and she didn’t want the stories of the city. She wanted to know why their mother had been so afraid of this man that she had run into the desert in the middle of a storm.

 When David tried to hand her the doll, she stepped back, her voice clear and sharp, when she told him that they didn’t need his things because they already had everything they needed right there. It was a moment of incredible courage for a 10-year-old girl. And Mary felt a surge of pride that gave her the strength to step out onto the porch and tell David to leave.

 But David only smiled, a slow, predatory smile that told her he was enjoying the game. And as he drove away, he left the gift sitting on the porch like a silent mocking reminder of his power. That night the house was filled with attention that was almost unbearable. And as the children sat in their room with the colored pencils sitting on the floor between them, Sam wanted to use them to see what those vibrant colors would look like on the page.

 But he was torn by the loyalty he felt toward his grandmother and the anger he saw in his sister’s eyes. Ivy sat on her bed, her expression grim, watching her brother with a sense of disappointment that Sam didn’t know how to handle. and the silence between them was a chasm that had never been there before. Mary sat in the kitchen, her hands trembling as she made a pot of tea, listening to the quiet murmurss of the children and feeling as if the very walls of her home were starting to close in.

 She knew that David Miller was winning, and she didn’t know how to stop him without revealing the truth that Ellen had sacrificed everything to hide. During the following morning, Ivy could no longer contain the fire that was burning inside her, and she waited until Mary was out in the coupe before she went into her grandmother’s bedroom.

 She had seen where Mary went when she thought they were sleeping, and she knew exactly which floorboard was loose beneath the edge of the rug. With trembling fingers, she pulled the wooden box from its hiding place and opened it, her breath catching in her throat as she saw the yellowed letter and the photograph of David and Ellen.

 She read the words, her mind racing as she processed the warning her mother had left behind, the warning about the man who was currently trying to buy their affection. The truth was far worse than she had imagined, son, and the realization that their mother had fled in fear for their lives turned her world upside down in a single terrifying instant.

She took the letter to Sam, who was sitting under the old oak tree trying to draw with his old charcoal pencil, and she forced him to read the words their mother had written. Sam’s face went pale as he read the plea for their safety. the ink blurred name of David Miller standing out like a stain on the page, and he felt a sudden, sickening wave of guilt for having even touched the colored pencils.

The image of the kind, wealthy father he had been building in his mind, shattered into a thousand jagged pieces, replaced by the shadow of the man their mother had feared. But Sam was a boy who wanted to believe in the good. And the conflict inside him was so great that he suddenly stood up and shouted that the letter could be a lie.

 That maybe Mary had written it herself to keep them there. It was a desperate, irrational outburst born of the pain of having his dreams destroyed, and he ran toward the house, leaving Ivy standing under the tree with the letter in her hand. Mary came in from the coupe and saw the box on the bed, her heart stopping when she realized that the secret was out and that her grandchildren were now carrying the burden she had tried so hard to bear for them.

 She found Ivy in the kitchen, the girl’s eyes filled with a maturity that was far beyond her years, and for a long moment the two of them just looked at each other in the silence. There were no more lies to tell, no more stories to invent. And Mary sat down and told Ivy everything she knew about the night Ellen arrived and the fear that had never left her.

 She spoke of the man David Miller truly was. A man who viewed people as assets and children as property. And she saw the way Ivy’s jaw set with a resolve that matched her own. They were two women, one old and one young, standing together in the wreckage of their peace, preparing for a battle that they knew was only just beginning.

But the damage to Sam had already been done, and the boy was caught in a whirlwind of confusion and hurt that he didn’t know how to navigate. That evening, when the black SUV returned, Sam didn’t wait for David to reach the porch. He walked out to the gate with his small bag of belongings, his expression a mask of cold, determined pain.

 He told Mary that he was going with his father so that the judge would leave her alone, his voice cracking as he tried to sound like the man of the house he so desperately wanted to be. He thought he was saving her, sacrificing his own happiness to protect her from the legal storm that was coming. and Mary could only watch in horror as her grandson climbed into the back of the vehicle.

 David Miller didn’t even look back at the house as he drove away, his victory complete, leaving Mary and Ivy standing in the dust of the road as the sun set over the desert like a dying ember. The city was a place of glass and steel, a labyrinth of noise and light that felt like another world to Sam. As he sat in the back of the SUV, he was taken to a house that was larger than the entire block of Blue Mesa, and a place filled with expensive furniture and cold, silent rooms that felt more like a gallery than a home.

 David Miller was rarely there, his time consumed by meetings and phone calls, leaving Sam in the care of a rotation of nannies and tutors, who looked at him as if he were a specimen under a microscope. He had all the colored pencils he could ever want, and a room with a bed so soft it felt like a cloud. But he couldn’t sleep, the silence of the mansion louder than any desert wind.

 He spent his nights staring out the window at the city lights, wondering if his grandmother was looking at the same moon, and he felt a loneliness that was deeper and more profound than anything he had ever known. Back in the desert, Parker the lawyer was sitting in his sterile office to surrounded by the files that would finalize the removal of Ivy from Mary’s care.

 He was a man who had built a career on being efficient and unfeilling. But for the first time in years, he found himself unable to focus on the documents in front of him. He thought of the way Mary had stood on that porch, her small frame a barrier against the world, and he was reminded of his own mother, a woman who had worked three jobs to put him through law school, and whom he had not seen in 5 years.

 He remembered the smell of her kitchen, the sound of her laughter, and the way she had looked at him with a pride that he had never quite felt he deserved. He looked at the folder for the Miller case, and felt a sudden, visceral disgust for the man he was representing, a man who was using his children as pawns in a corporate game of succession.

 And Parker began to look deeper into the files David Miller had provided, the ones that were meant to be kept in the confidential drawer, and he found a trail of corruption that went far beyond a simple custody case. He found records of payments to Judge Wilson, the man who had signed the initial order, and transcripts of surveillance on Ellen that suggested David had known where she was for years, waiting for the right moment to strike.

He realized that the entire case was a meticulously constructed lie, a web of bribery and intimidation designed to crush a defenseless old woman and steal her grandchildren for the sake of a trust fund. The weight of his own complicity felt like a physical burden, and as the clock on his wall ticked toward midnight, he made a decision that would either redeem his soul or destroy his career.

 He He spent the night gathering every piece of evidence he could find, making copies of bank transfers and emails that David Miller thought had been deleted forever. He knew that he couldn’t go to the local authorities, for they were already in Miller’s pocket, so he contacted an old friend from law school, who was now an investigator for the state’s attorney general.

 They met in a crowded diner on the edge of the city, the air thick with the smell of grease and coffee. and Parker handed over the folder that contained the truth about David Miller. As he walked out of the diner and into the cool morning air, he felt a strange sense of lightness, a feeling he hadn’t experienced since he was a boy in his mother’s house.

 He didn’t know what would happen next, but for the first time in his life, he was on the right side of the fight. The hearing at the county courthouse was set for 10:00 on a Friday morning. The air in the small courtroom heavy with the scent of floor wax and nervous anticipation. Mary and Ivy arrived early, dressed in their best clothes, their faces set in expressions of quiet, grim determination as they sat on the hard wooden bench.

 On the other side of the room, David Miller sat with a new team of lawyers, his expression one of arrogant confidence, as if the outcome were already decided. Sam was there, too, sitting next to his father, his face thin and his eyes filled with a hollow sadness that made Mary’s heart ache with a physical pain.

He wouldn’t look at her, his gaze fixed on the floor. and Mary wanted more than anything to run across the room and pull him into her arms, out to tell him that everything was going to be all right. The judge, a man named Henderson, who had replaced the disgraced Wilson, entered the room and called the session to order, his voice echoing in the high ceiling chamber.

David’s lead lawyer stood and began to present their case, a polished narrative of a devoted father and a grandmother who was too old and too poor to provide a proper life for the children. He spoke of stability and opportunity, his words, a rhythmic, hypnotic drone that seemed to lull the room into a sense of inevitabilities.

But then a side door opened and Parker walked in, not to join the Miller team, but to take a seat at the back of the room next to the investigator from the state’s attorney general. The atmosphere in the courtroom shifted instantly, the air humming with a sudden, electric tension as David Miller realized that something had gone terribly wrong.

 When it was time for the defense to speak, Mary stood up, her voice small but steady, as she began to tell the story of the last 10 years, but she was interrupted by the investigator, who stepped forward and asked the judge for a moment to present new evidence. He handed over the folder Parker had provided, and as Judge Henderson read the documents, the silence in the courtroom was so absolute that the ticking of the wall clock sounded like a hammer.

 The judge’s face turned a deep angry red as he looked at the records of bribery and the evidence of David Miller’s true motives, and he looked up at the man in the blue suit with a gaze that was cold enough to freeze blood. He then turned his attention to the twins on asking them if they wanted to say anything before he made his final ruling, and the room held its breath as Sam and Ivy stood up together.

 Ivy spoke first, her voice ringing out like a bell as she spoke of the mother who had died to save them and the grandmother who had lived to raise them. Her words a powerful unfiltered testimony to the strength of love over money. And then Sam, his voice trembling but clear, spoke of the loneliness of the mansion and the realization that a father who buys your love with colored pencils is no father at all.

 He walked across the room and took his grandmother’s hand, his sister taking the other, and together they stood as a single unbreakable unit against the man who had tried to tear them apart. The judge didn’t need to hear anymore. He ruled that the custody would remain with Mary and ordered the immediate arrest of David Miller for bribery and intimidation.

 And as the baiffs moved in to lead the man away, the courtroom erupted in a wave of sound that felt like the breaking of a 10-year storm. Life returned to the ranch in the desert, but it was a life that was deeper and richer for the fire it had survived. The three of them moving together with a renewed sense of purpose and peace.

 The colored pencils were still there, but now Sam used them to draw the truth of their world. the beauty of the desert and the strength of the woman who had kept them safe. Ivy grew into a young woman of incredible intelligence and compassion, eventually going to law school herself so that she could protect other families from the predators of the world.

 And Mary, her hair now as white as the desert sand. I spent her days in the coupe and her evenings on the porch, watching her grandchildren grow and knowing that she had fulfilled the promise she had made to Ellen all those years ago. She had learned that the greatest wealth is not found in a bank account, but in the hands that hold you when the world turns cold, and in the legacy of love that carries on long after the stories are finished.

 As we grow older, we come to realize that life is not measured by the things we accumulate, but by the strength of the bonds we forge in the quiet, difficult moments that no one else ever sees. We learn that sacrifice is not a burden, but a form of grace, a way of telling the people we love that they are worth everything we have to give, even when we have nothing left.

 There is a profound beauty in the simplicity of a life lived for others. Um, a richness in the daily chores and the shared meals that far exceeds any luxury the world can offer. We see that the past is always with us. A map of where we have been and a guide for where we are going and that the secrets we keep to protect our loved ones are sometimes the greatest gifts of all.

 It is in the endurance of the heart that we find our true purpose. In the ability to stand tall against the storms of life and to hold on to the values that truly matter. We understand now that the world will always try to tell us what is important using the language of power and money to distract us from the simple truths that sustain the soul.

But we know better, for we have seen the way a grandmother’s hands can build a home out of dust, and the way a child’s love can topple a giant whose heart is empty. We recognize that every day is a choice between the easy path of convenience and the hard path of integrity. And that the legacy we leave behind is written in the lives of the people we have touched.

 Life is a long and winding road filled with beauty and sorrow in equal measure. But as long as we have the courage to love fiercely and the wisdom to know what is real, we are never truly lost. Let us cherish the quiet mornings and the starlit nights. For they are the reminders of the eternal rhythm of a life well-lived. A life that is defined not by what we took, but by what we gave.