Page 27 of You Are Mine

But it was still there, always still there, lurking at the edge of her consciousness, and when she saw her son scrolling through that junk at ten o’clock on a Friday night it made its presence known.

What is he doing? Where are his friends? Why is he wasting his time on this?

And then a bleak future for him unrolled in front of her, a future in which he flunked out of high school and ended up in a one-room apartment with only his phone and some video games for company.

Mary knew it was ridiculous, she knew he had lots of friends. He did well in school; his teachers liked him, and by all accounts he was a sensible and reliable member of the school community. He was a little haphazard, but he was also a sixteen-year-old boy.

Which meant that he should have been sneaking beers and cigarettes with his friends on a Friday night, not sitting on his couch scrolling through videos of NFL hits or amusing dogs or one-sided political memes.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Good night?’

He gave a non-committal grunt.

‘Not seeing your friends?’

‘Nah.’

‘No one doing anything?’ She had FOMO on his behalf, a picture of all his friends raging in someone’s sweaty basement, shaking their heads when someone suggested inviting Otis.

‘We’re playing soccer tomorrow.’

‘I meant tonight.’

‘Nah. We were thinking about going bowling but couldn’t get a ride.’

‘So no one went?’

‘Mom,’ Otis said. ‘My friends aren’t ditching me, OK? Chill, bro.’

‘OK. I’ll chill.’ She couldn’t resist an addition. ‘Bro.’

He looked at her and rolled his eyes, a faint smile on his lips. She leaned down and kissed his forehead. It was warm and greasy and he needed to develop a closer relationship with soap but she loved him, this boy, by God and Jesus and all that was holy she loved this clumsy and awkward and beautiful little human that she had carried in her body and given birth to in the most ecstatic and painful and wondrous moment she had ever or would ever experience.

And if she could just hang onto this moment, this smile and kiss, this sense of peace that he was well and Sally was well, then everything would be OK. But the moment would escape her, she knew that, and she grieved it already.

‘Want anything?’ she said.

‘I’m low-key kinda hungry,’ he said.