“I’m up here,” I said. “In my room. Can you come here for a minute?”
He came to the door and stopped. He looked at me. He looked at the shoebox on the bed and the letters spread across the comforter, and I watched him read his own name on the envelopes, over and over, in his father’s handwriting.
“What is that?”
I told him. All of it. I didn’t make excuses. I tried to explain why, about the relapse, about being scared, about him being twelve. But I heard how it sounded even as I said it. Like the excuses he had given me in the car at McDonald’s. I just wanted to protect you. I was going to tell you.
When I finished, he was standing very still in the doorway.
“Four years,” he said.
“Sam…”
“You yelled at me. In the car. You yelled at me for six weeks.” His voice was getting louder. “Six weeks, Mom. And you had these for four years. Four years!”
