Memory does not automatically update itself when the adult standing at the end of those years does something you cannot reconcile with the boy you remember.
I wanted an explanation that could make the room less real.
But Lily was still burning against my chest.
Mason had still been behind a locked door.
Brian had still written the note.
Those facts did not care what I wanted.
The emergency lights continued flashing across the window.
Mason leaned toward me instead of toward the front door.
His voice dropped again.
He wasn’t finished.
There was another thing inside the house, he said, something I needed to locate before his father got back.
And with Lily in my arms, Brian’s note still open on the counter, and Mason clutching the dead tablet against his chest, I realized the most frightening part of that night might not have been what I had already found.
It was that a ten-year-old boy clearly believed we were running out of time to find the rest.
