Then I thought about all the other times. The ninety-day chip. The promises. The birthday party. I thought about my son’s face when he was eight, sitting on that bench in the dark. And I thought, If I give him this letter, and Greg fails again, it will break him. He’s twelve. He’s finally okay. He’s finally stopped asking.
So I put it in the shoebox.
Three months later, Greg’s sister called me to say he had walked out of the program and they didn’t know where he was. I remember standing in the kitchen with the phone and feeling relief so strong it made me sick. See, I thought. I was right. I protected him.
The letters kept coming for a few more weeks after that, from different addresses, a motel in Kingston, a shelter in Poughkeepsie. Then they stopped. I put every one of them in the box. I stopped opening them. I told myself I was being a good mother.
