It should’ve been safe.
The driveway was still narrow and cracked down the middle. Abel and I used to sit right there, backs against the garage door, feet on the warm concrete, blasting each other with neon water guns until my mom yelled from the porch about slipping.
Otto Keller still lived across the street.
He was one of the detectives assigned to Abel's case. For a while, it was him who came over to give my mom updates.
Before everything fell apart, he used to wander over sometimes while we played, coffee mug in one hand, squinting at the water guns like he was investigating a crime scene. “Recklessuse of high-pressure weaponry,” he’d say, crouching down to inspect the puddles.
Even after he retired, Otto never really stopped checking on us. Sometimes it was practical things—fixing the porch light, shoveling the walkway. Sometimes it was just standing on the porch talking to mom longer than necessary.
I used to think he might be in love with her.
Not in a dramatic way. Just… the quiet kind of love that waits around and hopes the other person eventually looks up.
My mom never noticed. Or maybe she did and didn’t know what to do with it. Grief rearranged her world into something smaller, and Otto patiently waited outside the borders of it.
Poor guy was still waiting.
I sat in my car for a second longer than necessary, fingers flexing against the steering wheel before I finally killed the engine and dropped my keys in the cupholder.
Peeling my hands off the wheel, I shoved the car door open and stepped out. Beads of sweat already lined the back of my neck as I moved up the walk.
The front door swung open.
Of course.
Mom didn’t do surprises, so I scheduled my life in a way that never gave her any. I texted when I left campus. She replied with a thumbs-up emoji, which meant she’d been watching the street since noon.
“Archie.” The skin around her eyes tightened as she looked me up and down. The moment I was within arms reach, she cupped my face and pressed her thumbs into my cheeks.
“You look tired,” she said.
“I’m a grad student, Mom. Exhaustion is a requirement.”
She exhaled through her nose. Short, dark hair skimmed her forehead with the movement. Rhys said she had perfect bone structure for a pixie cut.
I never thought about that when I looked at her.
I noticed her cheeks, and the way they didn’t lift quite as high as they used to. The absence of her dimples and how she never smiled wide enough to display them.
Not anymore.
Taking a step backward, she left one hand on the doorframe and gave me just enough space to slip inside the house.
It smelled like plants and warm air and the herbal tea she drank religiously—something green and vaguely medicinal that tasted the way a dentist's office smelled. If Abel or I eventhoughtwe might be getting sick, she’d pour that shit down our throats.
Mom locked the door behind me, and I felt the familiar pinch in my chest.
Not fear exactly, but something older. Something that remembered being stuck.
Breathe, Archie.
She can’t keep you here anymore.
She used to be an elementary school teacher—the kind with laminated lesson plans and infinite patience. Now she tutored online from the spare bedroom, headset always charged, and digital worksheets pulled up in tidy little folders.
God.