For twenty minutes, there was no mother in me.
Only a wound.
Then the doctor came out and told me Noah was stable.
I sank to the floor and sobbed without sound.
A nurse named Carla sat beside me. She did not tell me everything would be okay. I was grateful for that.
Instead, she handed me a blanket and said, “He knew you came.”
I looked at her.
“When he woke up,” she said softly. “Before the detective came in. He kept asking for you. He said, ‘Mommy always comes.’”
That broke me worse than anything else.
Because I had not come soon enough.
The next morning, Harris returned with two federal agents.
That was when I knew the nightmare had grown teeth.
The agents introduced themselves as Morales and Keene. They were polite, careful, and far too serious. They asked me about Daniel’s military contacts, his finances, his friends, his relatives, his schedule before deployment.
