“What’s wrong with you?” my son snapped. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
I didn’t answer immediately. I simply studied him.
The man standing in front of me was tall, broad-shouldered, and angry. But suddenly I could see something else too — the frightened boy he once was, the one who used to run into my room after nightmares.
And yet… that boy was gone.
“You’re not my son anymore,” I said quietly.
His face twisted. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” I continued, straightening my back, “that the boy I raised would never lay his hands on his mother.”
For a second the room felt completely still.
Then he scoffed. “Oh, here we go. The victim act.”
His wife chuckled again, though it sounded forced now.
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