“I remember everything, Mom,” he said, and turned toward the window.
Greg moved out three weeks after that night at the rink. It wasn’t the first bad night. It was just the last one I could forgive. For a while, he lived with his brother in Albany. He sent child support for about five months. Then the checks stopped, and the phone calls got further apart, and then they stopped too. The last time Sam saw his father, he was nine years old, and Greg had shown up for his birthday party two hours late and smelling like mouthwash.
I told Sam his father was sick. That was how I explained it. Daddy has a sickness that makes him make bad choices, and until he gets better, it’s not safe for him to be around us. I said it gently. I said it a hundred times. I took Sam to a counselor for two years. I did everything right. I made sure he never had to sit on a bench in the cold waiting for anyone ever again.
