Those words should have comforted me. Instead, they opened a hollow place inside me.
My childhood had not felt protected.
My mother, Elaine, had raised me alone. She worked long hours at a laundromat and rarely spoke about the past. There had been no photographs of my father, no stories about relatives, no family gatherings at Christmas. Whenever I asked where we came from, she gave me the same answer.
“We came from each other. That’s enough.”
When I was fourteen, she became seriously i/ll. Within a year, she was gone.
Afterward, I lived with a foster family until I finished school. I had spent most of my life believing that every person connected to my past had vanished with her.
But Carl had been there.
Watching.
Helping.
Never stepping into the light.
“Why didn’t he introduce himself sooner?” I asked.
Daniel kept his eyes on the road.
