“Jesus, Mom. You’ve been living here for three months? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I almost laughed.
“Tell you what? That your wife threw me out and you let her? I think you knew.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, head in his hands.
“I didn’t know it would be like this. I thought Vanessa said you had savings, that you’d find an apartment. I didn’t think—”
“You didn’t think at all, Robert. You just did what she told you.”
He looked up at me, and I saw it.
The little boy who used to crawl into my bed during thunderstorms, who cried when I dropped him off at kindergarten, who told me I was his best friend when he was seven.
That boy was gone.
“She’s pregnant,” he said.
My stomach twisted.
“What?”
“Vanessa. She’s pregnant. Two months. She told me last week.”
He wiped his eyes.
“She said if I don’t fix this, if I don’t get us a place to live, she’ll leave. She’ll take the baby and I’ll never see it.”
I sat down in the plastic chair by the window.
