« OH MY GOD, MARCUS, WHAT DID YOU DO?! »
No one answered.
Of course no one answered.
I sat there for a long time, the letter shaking in my hands, the metal box open beside me on our son’s bedroom floor.
Downstairs, I could hear the muffled sounds of the television, my other children completely unaware that the ground had just shifted permanently beneath all of us.
I thought about the sixteen years leading up to this exact moment, replaying them rapidly, searching for cracks I’d never noticed before.
The way Marcus had never once mentioned childhood friends by name, always deflecting gently whenever I asked about his life before we met.
The way he’d flinched, almost imperceptibly, whenever a stranger approached us too quickly in a parking lot.
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