Just seeing his name made me feel sick. Not because I believed what he wrote—I didn’t, not anymore, not after months of therapy and the slow, painful work of remembering who I was before I met him. But because his messages were a thread back to everything I was trying to leave behind. The person I’d become with him. I’d let myself shrink, smaller and smaller, until I barely took up any space at all.
The look on William’s face the day Craig screamed at him.
I stood up from my drafting table so fast the chair rolled backward and hit the wall. I couldn’t work. Not now. Not with those words sitting in my message box like something rotting.
I walked to the kitchen instead, looked out the window. What I saw there didn’t make me feel any better.
William was crouched near the back fence.
Again.
This was the third time this week I’d found him in that exact spot, spending long stretches in that corner of the yard. He wasn’t playing—not the usual digging and running and imaginary battles that six-year-old boys engaged in. He was just sitting. Crouched low, face near the ground, focused on something at the base of the fence.
Someone had moved in to the house next door about a week ago. I’d only caught glimpses—a moving truck on Saturday, a tall figure carrying boxes. I hadn’t introduced myself yet. Hadn’t found the time or maybe hadn’t wanted to find the time. New people required energy I didn’t have.
William shifted position, pressing his face closer to the ground. His body language wasn’t tense exactly, but there was an intensity to his posture that I couldn’t read. Was this normal curiosity? Or was he retreating into himself, pulling away from the world like he used to in Craig’s house?
I wanted to go out there. Ask him what was so interesting. Make sure he was okay.
But hovering didn’t help. I’d learned that. William needed space to process things in his own way, his own time. Sometimes the best thing I could do was wait for him to come to me.
So I stood at the window and watched my son and tried not to let Craig’s words loop through my head on repeat.
No man is ever going to want you.
I turned away from the scene outside and focused on the room instead. Washed the coffee mug I’d left in the sink that morning. Wiped down the counter. Small, manageable tasks that didn’t require my brain to do anything more than follow muscle memory.
When I looked out again, the spot by the fence was empty. Then the back door opened, and William stood on the threshold.
His knees were grass-stained, his shirt untucked, his sneakers caked with mud. He took a few steps, looked down at his feet, then at me, and stepped back onto the mat. Started wiping his shoes. Carefully, methodically, pressing each sole against the bristles over and over, long past the point where it was doing any good. His body had gone stillthe way it used to go still in Craig’s house, bracing for the reaction.
“I got dirty,” he said. Small voice. Still wiping.
My chest ached.
“I see that.” I kept my voice easy, light. Grabbed a towel and walked over to him. “Looks like you found some good mud.”
He blinked. “There’s a puddle by the fence. From the sprinklers.”
“Makes sense. That’s the best kind of dirt.” I winked at him and rubbed his brown hair, so much like mine. “I think you got it. Let’s take them off.”
He toed off his sneakers carefully and left them by the mat, still watching me. Waiting.
“Did you find any good bugs out there?” I bent over and lifted the shoes for a final examination.
The tension in his shoulders loosened, just slightly. “A beetle. A really big black one. I didn’t touch it, though.”
“Smart. Some of them pinch.” I rubbed off a couple missed spots of mud, then set them by the door and stood. “Why don’t you go wash your hands, and then we can figure out dinner.”
He took a step toward the bathroom, then stopped. Turned back. His eyes moved over my face the way they always did—quick, careful, reading me like other kids read picture books. Looking for the chapter where everything went wrong.
He wouldn’t find it. Not here. Not with me.
“Go on,” I said, keeping my voice easy. “I’m thinking tacos.”
His shoulders loosened even more, and he released a breath. He nodded and padded off down the hall in his socked feet.
A six-year-old shouldn’t have to check his mother’s facefor permission to relax. Shouldn’t have to scan a room before he entered it, measuring the temperature of the silence. Shouldn’t know, in his bones, that the wrong mood could turn an ordinary afternoon into something to survive.
