No calls.
No letters.
No photos.
Nothing.
The silence that followed was louder than any argument could have been. I kept his room exactly as he left it — the posters on the wall, the worn baseball glove on the shelf, the blanket folded at the foot of the bed.
I dusted the room every week. I opened the windows in spring so it wouldn’t smell stale. I talked to him in my prayers as if he could somehow hear me.
Years passed.
Birthdays came and went. I baked a small cake each year anyway.
On his eighteenth birthday, I told myself not to hope.
Hope had become too dangerous.
