Then I imagined Noah on the floor, trying not to cry because a grown man had told him crying would get him hurt again.
“Derek,” I said, “tell me what you see.”
A few seconds passed.
Then gravel crunched under tires.
“I’m pulling up,” he said.
His voice dropped lower.
“Your porch flag is knocked sideways. Front door’s cracked. I see Noah’s little blue sneaker by the steps.”
My vision narrowed.
“A sneaker?”
“The blue one.”
I had tied that shoe myself two mornings before.
Noah had insisted he could do it, then made a knot so tight I had to pick at it with a fork.
A tiny, stupid memory.
The kind that becomes unbearable when you are afraid you will never get another one.
“Derek, wait for the officers,” I said, though I already knew he would not.
“I hear yelling inside.”
The dispatcher asked what he heard.
