“What does that mean?”
Their mother sat down across from me.
“Grant, please.”
Dictionaries & Encyclopedias
“What does it mean?”
She stared at the table.
“There were a couple of other times.”
The room seemed to narrow around that sentence.
“You left them alone before?”
“Not like today.”
“That’s not an answer.”
She said there had been shorter absences.
Once while Miles was asleep.
Once when she claimed she was picking something up nearby.
Once when Tessa had been told to stay inside and call only if there was an emergency.
Every explanation contained the same assumption: because nothing terrible had happened the previous time, the risk must have been acceptable.
It wasn’t.
And the messages proved something even uglier than carelessness.
This hadn’t been a moment when an exhausted parent cracked and made one reckless decision.
There had been a system.
My work schedule was part of it.
