I never doubted that.
But love is not the same thing as judgment.
Travis had been around for about three months.
He was the kind of man who smiled too fast and stared too long.
At pickups, he would stand behind Lena on the porch with his arms folded, like I was the inconvenience instead of Noah’s father.
I asked Lena once if she was sure about him.
She told me I was being controlling.
After that, I kept my mouth shut because I did not want every concern turned into a custody fight.
That silence sat beside me in the car now like another passenger.
At the first red light, I almost ran it.
A school bus rolled through the intersection from the left, yellow and huge and slow.
I slammed the heel of my hand against the steering wheel and forced myself to wait.
The dispatcher asked me to repeat Travis’s name.
