“Are you currently at the location?”
“No. I’m driving there. My brother is closer.”
“Sir, do not enter the residence if the suspect is armed. Officers are being dispatched.”
I heard the words.
I even understood why she had to say them.
But all I could see was Noah’s bedroom with the blue dinosaur blanket, the little plastic bin of toy cars under the window, and the baseball glove I had bought him even though he still wore it on the wrong hand.
I had been divorced from Lena for eleven months.
We were not enemies, but we were no longer friends.
We had learned how to be civil in the driveway.
We had learned how to pass over a backpack without discussing the things that broke us.
We had learned how to sign the same school forms and stand near each other at preschool events without turning every small disagreement into proof that the marriage had failed for a reason.
