Nothing gets published unless you choose that later.”
My son’s head snapped toward her.
“Published?”
For the first time that morning, fear entered his voice.
Elena did not threaten him.
She didn’t need to.
“I said nothing is being published.”
He looked from Elena to Marcus to David, suddenly calculating what each of them represented.
Law.
Witness.
Records.
Not power in the theatrical sense.
Something more dangerous to a person who had grown comfortable behaving badly behind closed doors: accountability.
Sloan stepped closer to him.
“Tell them to leave.”
My son seemed relieved to receive an instruction.
“Everyone out.
Now.”
Marcus closed the folder.
“Fine.
Loretta, get what you need.”
My son stared at me.
“You’re leaving?”
I looked at him for a long moment.
I had once sat beside his hospital bed all night when he was nine because he was afraid I would disappear if he fell asleep.
I had stood in a rainstorm outside his middle school after the bus never came.
I had stretched grocery money until payday and told him I had already eaten.
For years, I thought motherhood meant enduring almost anything.
But enduring for your child and enduring your child are not the same thing.
“Yes,” I said.
He scoffed.
“Where?”
Marcus answered before I could.
“That is no longer your concern.”
I went upstairs.
I owned less than I had realized.
Two suitcases held most of the things I cared about.
Clothes.
Medicine.
A small jewelry box.
A folder of personal records.
Photographs.
The blue ceramic bird my son made in elementary school, one wing larger than the other.
I held it for several seconds before wrapping it in a sweater.
The boy who made that bird had loved me.
I did not need to pretend the man downstairs was still that boy.
When I returned, David took one suitcase.
Marcus took the other.
My son stood in the foyer with his arms crossed.
“You’re really going to make a scene over one argument?”
“You struck me,” I said.
“I said I barely touched you.”
“You struck me.”
He opened his mouth again.
This time Sloan grabbed his arm.
“Stop talking.”
