The nurse came back to check his vitals and told me gently that I should go home, get some rest, and that they would call if anything changed.
I squeezed Andrew’s hand. “I’ll be back in the morning. I love you, bud.”
Outside, the parking lot was wet with rain, the streetlights throwing long reflections across the pavement. I sat in my car with the note in my palm for a long time before I started the engine.
What I Found in His Closet at Midnight
The house was silent and cold when I got home. I went straight to Andrew’s room and stood in the doorway for a moment, breathing in the smell of his shampoo and his deodorant and the particular lived-in atmosphere of a thirteen-year-old’s space. His closet door was open about an inch, as though someone had looked inside recently and hadn’t quite pulled it shut.
