“Yeah, Mom.” He grabbed his jacket and leaned over to kiss my cheek. “See you tonight.”
Then the door closed behind him.
I stood at the window and watched him walk down the street the way I always did. It was such a normal moment that I never imagined it would become the last ordinary memory I had of him.
That night, Ethan didn’t come home.
At first, I wasn’t worried. Ethan sometimes stayed after school to play guitar with friends or wandered over to the park nearby. He usually texted when he did that, but I told myself maybe his phone battery had died.
I kept repeating that excuse while I cooked dinner, while I ate alone, and while I washed the dishes and left his plate warming in the oven.
But when darkness fell and his room was still empty, something inside me twisted with fear.
I called his phone.
