I thought my son was coming home with a broken heart or a bad roommate story. Instead, he handed me a folded piece of paper from his best friend’s house, and one line on it pulled me straight back to the worst night of my life, eighteen years ago, in a hospital room where I couldn’t see a thing.
Part One: The Door He Locked Behind Him
I was stirring a pot of chili when I heard the front door open.
It was a Thursday evening, barely past six. The kitchen smelled like cumin and onions, and the radio on the windowsill was playing an old song I used to dance to when I was pregnant. I remember thinking how strange it was to cook for one person. For eighteen years, I had made dinner for a boy who ate like three grown men. Now the pot looked ridiculous on the stove.
Then I heard footsteps in the hallway, and I knew them right away.
“Luke?”
My son appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was still wearing his gray hoodie and the denim jacket he’d taken with him when he moved out two days earlier. His eyes were red. His face was blotchy. He looked the way he used to look when he was seven and had fallen off his bike, trying very hard not to cry and failing.
I turned off the stove and pulled out a chair.
“Sit down, sweetheart. What happened?”
He didn’t sit. He stayed by the door, wiping his cheeks with the sleeve of his jacket. Then he did something I’d never seen him do in his own home.
He reached behind him and locked the door.
