He cried. I cried too. Because he was still my son.
That’s the part nobody prepares you for. You can love your child with your whole heart and still be horrified by what he’s done. Both things can live inside you at the same time.
I reached out to Emma the next day. I texted: You don’t have to respond, but Daniel told me everything.
She called twenty minutes later. For a moment, neither of us could speak.
Then I said, “I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t know,” she said right away.
“I should have seen something.”
“Laura—”
“You were exhausted, and I kept telling you how wonderful you were for staying.”
She started crying. “I wanted to stay.”
I believed her.
“At first,” she added.
That was the painful part. She’d loved Daniel since she was sixteen. After the crash, she truly wanted to be there. But a few weeks in, she realized she wasn’t choosing it freely anymore. Every time she pictured going back to dance, she saw his motorcycle twisted beside that road. Every time he said, “Do whatever you want,” she heard a threat hiding underneath it, even when he never said one out loud.
