Preston — On the wall of 55-year-old Jac’s quaint rural home, a portrait of a young, blonde woman with stunning blue eyes hangs across from the front door, drawing the gaze of those who walk in.

Less than 20 feet away, a card celebrating the seventh birthday of the woman’s son sits on the dining room table, along with paperwork for a will Jac didn’t think she’d have to create until later in life.

After all, Jac’s 28-year-old daughter had just finished her time at Perception House, a halfway home in Willimantic. She had gotten an apartment in the same town and a cute used car so she could commute to her job at Bruegger’s Bagels. She even spoiled herself with the big-screen TV she always wanted because this time she believed her recovery would stick.

That was Dec. 2.

Three days later, police found her in her apartment, lifeless. The combination of Xanax and heroin proved too much for a woman who was nine months sober.

“I find peace in two things,” said Jac, who requested anonymity because not everyone in her family knows her story. “First, that she didn’t die here. And second, that she got to see her son before she died.”

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Jac and her husband are among thousands of grandparents raising their grandchildren in Connecticut — a growing number of whom are doing so because of the opioid epidemic, according to child welfare experts.

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey showed that the number of grandparents who live with and are financially responsible for grandchildren was lower in 2015 than in 2012, but still higher than it was in 2009.

Slightly more than 20,200 grandparents fell into that category in 2015, the latest year for which data are available.

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“There’s no doubt the impact of the crisis and the ripple effect of the crisis is that when people lose their lives … grandparents, uncles, aunts and others step up to care for the kids,” said Faith VosWinkel, assistant child advocate with the state Office of the Child Advocate.

In Connecticut last year, 917 people died from overdosing on drugs. Many of them were in their 20s or 30s, VosWinkel pointed out, and as a result, she said, many of them likely had children.

According to the state Department of Children and Families, which runs a Pay for Success project to expand in-home substance use services for parents with young children, there also has been an increase of nearly 500 children in state care since September 2013. Spokesman Gary Kleeblatt said the department believes the opioid epidemic and its impact on families is a primary factor in the uptick.

There are resources out there for grandparents and others who find themselves in a kinship care role, including a Connecticut 211 eLibrary paper that explains different types of custody and guardianship and how to get them. The paper, which also links to information about support groups, child care and financial assistance, is one of Connecticut 211’s most downloaded, according to Richard Porth, president and CEO of United Way of Connecticut.

For about the eighth year in a row, a bill in the General Assembly would increase the state’s stipend to families that receive temporary family assistance benefits and are headed by a nonparent relative who’s the legal guardian of at least one child.

According to Aging Committee co-chairman and state Rep. Joseph C. Serra, D-Middletown, the bill would make it so qualifying grandparents and other kinship caretakers could get 75 percent of what a foster parent receives monthly per child, or $621, instead of the $366 that is typical now.

A fiscal analysis of the bill put its price tag at an estimated $14.8 million, and Serra knows its chances are poor as a result.

“I think it’s discriminatory that foster parents get X number of dollars while grandparents or kin raising children get less than half of that,” he said. “I think the state of Connecticut is taking advantage of the love of grandparents or others for their relatives.”

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For Jac, custody didn’t begin when her daughter died.

Her daughter started recreationally using OxyContin in 2008, Jac said, possibly trying to self-medicate the bipolar disorder that wouldn’t be diagnosed until later in her life. Still, when she realized the grip Oxy had on her life, she asked for help and got on Suboxone, a blend of buprenorphine and naloxone that’s used to reduce symptoms of withdrawal.

In 2009, she was sober and pregnant. In 2012, the boy’s father left her. Her life spiraled out of control.

Jac, a second-shift oncology nurse at the time, agreed to take her youngest daughter in. In the spring, she began reconsidering.

Some nights, Jac would find her daughter outside with a cigarette in her mouth, half asleep. Sometimes her grandson would be up well past midnight, making a ruckus.

One night, Jac came home to find her daughter’s car gone. She ventured to the basement apartment where the two were staying and found the child strapped in his car seat, forgotten.

“I called DCF,” Jac said. “Do you know how hard that is?”

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Jac’s daughter made a brief recovery in 2015.

Wanting to get back in shape, she started running. With help from her mom, who picked her up and dropped her off, she got a job. Then she relapsed, violated her probation and ended up back in jail.

For the nine months she spent in jail and in the halfway house, she again was sober. Cards from her housemates show the impact she had on them. Some said they didn’t expect to make such a good friend at a halfway house. Some told her to keep in touch and made plans to drink coffee and pray together. Most told her they loved her.

“I worry for you,” one wrote. “I don’t want you to end up back here, or worse, dead.”

All of them showed up to her funeral.

“That’s the person they got to see,” Jac said, “and the person I wanted to see again.”

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Jac woke with a start when she heard a knock at 5:30 a.m. Then she screamed.

Instead of the daughter she was expecting, two officers stood there, ready to deliver news she didn’t want to hear.

“I wouldn’t let them in,” she said, looking toward the wall. “I was horrible. But nobody comes to your house at that hour for any other reason.”

It took her two days to tell her grandson. He screamed, too. Then he sobbed.

“He said, ‘But we were supposed to have lots of holidays together,’” Jac said, sobbing herself.

Angry, sad and lonely, he struggles in school. A team is working with him, Jac said, and he goes to counseling.

But she’s worried that he rarely asks to have friends over. He loves playing with his cousins — Jac has two other daughters with kids — but she can see how he aches for his mom when he sees them with theirs.

“I’m just an old grandma,” Jac said. “I used to play basketball with my kids, but I’d probably fall now.”

The 7-year-old, fiercely loyal, suffers from trust issues, too. Every time his mom returned from a stint in jail — or “work,” as Jac would call it, because how do you tell a kid his idol is in jail? — he welcomed her with open arms.

“He always let her come back into his life with the hope things would get better,” Jac said, crying again. “I can’t make him happy. I’ll never be able to change the emptiness.”

In an undated letter to her son — one he hasn’t seen, yet — Jac’s daughter apologized for the fights he had seen between her and his father. She promised to pay for college, or anything he wanted. She swore she’d be present in his life from that point forward. And she begged him not to follow in her footsteps.

“Why did you do this?” Jac asked with a whisper. “Why did you do this?”

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Jac and her husband envisioned trips to Florida Keys. Instead they get Disney World.

Twenty years a nurse, Jac dreamed of retiring from the career she built while her youngest was still 6. Instead she had to quit.

Decades ago, she wouldn’t have dreamed that at 55 she’d be toting a 7-year-old to school, baseball practice, a tonsillectomy, an appointment with the eye doctor, counseling.

And she definitely thought she was done sitting through tedious parties for kids, making small talk with other parents she may never see again. Now she has to make small talk with parents the age of her daughters.

“It’s not that I don’t love him,” she said of the boy who sometimes calls her “Grandma-Mommy.” “But what I’m doing is hard.”

And there’s a question nagging at Jac, one she hasn’t been able to answer: What happens if Jac and her husband die before their grandson is grown?

With six kids between them and busy work lives, her other daughters might be out of the question.

“What are we gonna do?” Jac asked, wondering not only about her own grandson, but also about the thousands of others who've been affected by the opioid epidemic.

“It breaks my heart that I lost my child, that I couldn’t help her,” she said. “But what about the little guy?”

l.boyle@theday.com