Off The Record I Was Holding My Son’s T-Shirt When His Teacher Called And Said He Had Left Something Behind

“The harder it got,” I finished.

“Yeah.”

I looked at my son’s face, small and permanent, over my husband’s heart. And something happened in my chest that I hadn’t felt in weeks — something that wasn’t grief exactly, or relief exactly, but some third thing that lives between them.

I laughed.

Not a polite laugh. Not the kind you produce to make someone feel better. The kind that comes from somewhere below the ribcage and takes you by surprise — the first real, involuntary, whole-body laugh since before the lake, since before any of it.