Morning came slowly each passing day. The house felt too quiet—like even the walls were trying to make space for the fallout. I stood by the kitchen sink, watching sunlight pour over the untouched breakfast table.
There were no coffee cups anymore. No phone calls buzzing from Zach’s office upstairs. Just the sound of Liam’s pencil scratching faintly against paper in the living room. He wasn’t asking questions. And that, somehow, hurt worse. I carried a glass of water to him, watching his small hands trace lazy shapes in his notebook.
“Draw anything good?”
He held up the page. It was a cartoon version of the concert crowd. He’d drawn me and him, hands up in the air, smiling—before the moment everything flipped.
“Memory rewrite,” he said with a grin.
A part of me cracked open at that. Not from sadness, but from the quiet strength in his voice. That my ten-year-old, sick as he was, understood something I had spent years ignoring.
I kissed the top of his head. “You want to talk about it?” I asked gently.
He looked up, eyes tired but sharp. “Everyone at school saw the clip.”
I sat beside him. “I know.”