I set the phone down on the bed.
Then I went down the hall to Caleb’s room. The door was open a crack. He was asleep on top of his covers, still in his father’s shirt, with the too small baseball glove on his hand.
I stood in the doorway for a long time.
I’d spent three years believing that if I kept the world out, I could keep us safe. That if nobody came in, nothing else could be taken from us. I thought I was protecting him from the pain.
But all I’d really done was take his whole family away, at the exact moment he needed them most. And he’d sat at the top of the stairs and watched me do it, and never said a word, because he was nine and he was trying to protect me.
We’d both been holding the door shut. From opposite sides.
