“Mom, what’s seven times eight?”
“Fifty-six,” I said, dragging the pot away from the heat. “And don’t ask me the next one. You know it.”
Emma, my eleven-year-old, walked by carrying plates and gave him a look that could have cut glass.
“He’s stalling.”
“I know.”
I stirred the sauce and checked the clock.
Daniel should have been at his parents’ house by then.
At least, that was what he had told me.
Three weeks earlier, I had noticed a small brass charm on his keychain. It looked like a coin, engraved with words I couldn’t read from a distance. When I asked about it, he smiled and said a friend from work had given it to him.
I let it go.
I was very good at letting things go.
But there had been other things too.
Phone calls taken on the back porch with the door closed.
Two late nights when he came home after eleven, smelling like rain and coffee.
A strange tiredness around his eyes.
A silence at dinner that felt heavier than work stress.
