I poured him a glass of water, watching him gulp it down with a desperation that turned my blood into ice. He didn’t cry. He didn’t throw a fit. He just drank the water and looked at me, waiting for me to make sense of a world that had suddenly turned cruel.
I didn’t ask any more questions. I didn’t want him to relive it yet. I told him to go sit in the living room and turn on his favorite cartoon.
As soon as he was settled, I grabbed my keys.
I didn’t think. I didn’t plan. I just drove.
The drive to my parents’ house—the house I had bought for them—took ten minutes. It was a beautiful colonial in a quiet neighborhood, a symbol of my gratitude for raising me. I paid the mortgage. I paid the property taxes. I paid the insurance. I had transferred the deed to their names privately to give them dignity, but the financial tether was entirely mine.
When I walked through the front door, the scene was maddeningly normal.
My mother was in the living room, folding a basket of warm, fluffy towels. My father was reclining in his leather armchair, a glass of condensation-slicked iced tea in his hand. The TV was murmuring in the background, some game show where people won money for answering trivia.
They looked up as I entered. They didn’t even look guilty. They looked comfortable.
“Hey, you’re here early,” my dad said, taking a sip of his tea. “Ethan get home okay?”
I stood in the entryway, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. I wasn’t sure if I was going to scream or vomit. The image of my son, sweating and alone in a stifling car while they sat in air-conditioned comfort, flashed in my mind.
“You have twenty-four hours,” I said. My voice sounded foreign, like it was coming from underwater.
