Now, what you need to understand about my husband is that he wasn’t a cruel man to strangers. But inside our home, he believed softness ruined boys.
Richard walked into the kitchen carrying a duffel bag I’d never seen before. He didn’t look at me. He set the bag down beside Ethan’s chair with a soft thud that made the pencil freeze in my son’s hand.
“Our son needs to become a man,” my husband said. “You have until noon.”
The coffee in my cup stopped moving. So did everything else. My spoon clattered into my coffee. The sound was small, but in that kitchen it felt like a window breaking.
“Richard, no. He’s still our child!”
“He’s an adult,” Richard said, sliding the duffel closer to Ethan’s bare foot. “And adults don’t hide behind their mothers.”
Ethan didn’t move at first. He stared at the bag as if it were a foreign object someone had left on the floor by mistake. Then my son stood up slowly. His eyes were rimmed red, but his voice came out colder than I’d ever heard it.
“I’ll never forgive either of you.” His gaze slid to me, and the cold cracked into something worse. “And you, Mom, you let him.”
I stepped between them. I think I said, please. I think I said a hundred things that all sounded like please.
“Honey, wait. Just sit down. Let me talk to your father.”
“There’s nothing to talk about, Mom.”
Ethan shouldered the duffel bag and brushed past me. I reached for his sleeve, and he pulled away, not roughly, just finally. He went to his room, changed, came back, and the front door closed behind him without a slam, which somehow hurt more than if he’d broken it.
I stood there in my robe, staring at the empty chair.
“Richard, bring him back! Where will he go?!”
“He’ll figure it out,” my husband said, pouring himself fresh coffee. “That’s the whole point.”
