I love my parents, Hank and Joyce, in the abstract way one loves a hurricane that has finally moved out to sea. You appreciate the power of it, but you definitely don’t want it parking over your roof.
For the last two years, I have maintained what therapists call low contact. I send generous gift cards on birthdays. I call on Christmas and Thanksgiving.
I text back within 24 hours, usually with short, polite answers that give away absolutely zero details about my finances or my personal life.
It was a rainy Tuesday evening when the peace broke.
I was in my home office, which sits in the loft overlooking the main living area. The rain was hammering against the floor-to-ceiling windows, turning the lake outside into a gray, blurring smear.
I had my noise-cancelling headphones on, deep in the flow state, finalizing a rendering for a client in Chicago. My phone was face down on the desk, set to Do Not Disturb.
I didn’t hear the vehicle approach. The driveway to my house is a quarter mile of gravel that winds through dense pine trees. It’s designed to be private.
Unless you are the Amazon delivery driver or the propane guy, you have no reason to be on that road.
What alerted me wasn’t a sound, but a flash of light. A pair of high-beam headlights swept across the vaulted ceiling of my living room, cutting through the dim ambient lighting like searchlights in a prison break.
I frowned, pulling my headphones off. My first thought was that a delivery driver was lost. It was 7:15 in the evening, pitch black outside, and storming.
