The crunch of the tires on the rain-soaked driveway snapped me right back to reality.
Ethan was back.
Beside me, Mason’s entire body went rigid.
It wasn’t normal tension.
It was a fear so deep that it left him completely paralyzed… the kind of fear no eight-year-old child should ever have to know.
That boy had been living with this fear for a very long time.
Not just today.
Not just this week.
For months.
—”Auntie…”
Mason’s voice was barely a whisper.
—”Please… don’t tell him.”
I didn’t cry.
I couldn’t even breathe.
There are some pains that don’t let you cry right away. First, they freeze you. They force you to look them dead in the eye before your body can react.
—”The pharmacy was a total madhouse,” Ethan said casually.
Too casually.
I turned around slowly.
Rain was dripping from his jacket. His eyes scanned the kitchen.
Me.
Mason.
The table.
Calculating. Always calculating.
For one terrifying second, I thought he knew.
But then he smiled.
That exact same smile everyone adored.
The smile that had once made my heart race on our very first date.
Now, it looked like a mask.
A mask that I suddenly realized I had never truly managed to see past.
Maybe because it had been there from the very beginning.
—”Everything good over here?”
Mason nodded immediately.
Too fast.
Too obedient.
The reflex of a child who had learned how to hide.
Ethan’s gaze lingered on him a second too long.
Then he walked over and ruffled his hair.
—”Ready to head home, champ?”
Champ.
The word made my stomach churn.
Mason looked at me just once.
Only once.
A silent plea for help.
And in that exact moment, I made my decision.
—”I’ll drive him home,” I said quickly. “You’ve already been driving in the pouring rain.”
Ethan blinked.
A tiny pause.
After seven years of marriage, you learn to read your husband’s silences.
He was suspicious.
Then he shrugged his shoulders.
—”Sure.”
But his eyes never left my face.
The drive to Mia’s house felt like an eternity.
Mason pressed himself right against the passenger door, clutching his backpack to his chest like a shield.
At every red light, I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye.
Trying to understand how an eight-year-old boy had carried such terror all on his own.
While I — the adult, the wife — had seen absolutely nothing.
Or maybe I had seen it.
That thought hurt even more.
The way Ethan always volunteered to take Mason to baseball practice.
The way he was always over at Mia’s house whenever she “needed help.”