Then, senior year, I called campus security after hearing screaming from her room. Rachel told everyone I had exaggerated. Mark called me jealous. Our friends chose comfort over truth. Rachel moved out two days later and never spoke to me again.
Now her son was looking at me like I was the last piece of a map.
I stepped closer. “Oliver, where is your mom?”
His face crumpled. “I don’t know.”
Maribel gently explained what they had learned. Oliver had been in the back seat of a rideshare hit by a drunk driver. The driver was injured but alive. Oliver had no phone. In his backpack, police found a sealed envelope, a change of clothes, and my contact card.
“Was your mother in the car?” I asked.
He shook his head. “She put me in it.”
“Where were you going?”
“To you.”
The room seemed to tilt.
