she left.”
“She would never do that to me.”
John looked exhausted.
“Maybe that sentence is part of the problem.”
By August, Liam left for college.
At his car, I tried to hug him.
He let me, but barely.
“Don’t disappear on me, too,” I whispered.
His eyes filled.
“I’m trying not to.”
A month later, I smelled smoke coming from under his bedroom door.
Liam was away. John was at work. I was upstairs alone when the smell reached me—sharp, burnt, wrong.
His door was locked.
I used a
