I held the box against my chest, heavy with the small things people don’t think to steal: Terrence’s college notebooks, a childhood baseball glove, a stuffed bear I’d given him on our first Christmas.
“Sorry,” I said quietly, “doesn’t keep you warm at night.”
He flinched like I’d hit him, but I never lifted my hand. I only lifted the truth.
When I drove away, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Crystal leaning into Beverly, both of them laughing, Howard’s hand already reaching for a bottle of champagne on the kitchen counter.
Celebrating.
As if they’d buried a problem instead of a son.
I didn’t cry in the car. I couldn’t. My tears had turned into something else—stored, sealed, waiting.
I moved into a studio apartment on the other side of town that smelled like old carpet and someone else’s cooking oil. One room, a tiny bathroom, a kitchenette that could barely pretend to be a kitchen. The window faced a brick wall, so daylight arrived like an apology.
I took a job at a community health clinic.
The pay was modest. The work was relentless.
But the patients were real.