The taxi ride away from the airport should have been the moment I accepted that my son was gone. Instead, it became the moment I realized he had been trying to protect me.
My fingers were still wrapped around the black card hidden inside my coat pocket when I finally looked at it closely. It was plain, almost too simple for what it represented. No name. No logo. No explanation. Just a card that Tyler had pressed into my hand moments before he walked away with his father.
Seven days earlier, I had watched my thirteen-year-old son stand in a courtroom and make a choice that shattered me.
His father, Harrison, had everything I could never provide. Money. Connections. A future that seemed unlimited. I had spent years giving Tyler the things that did not show up on paper: packed lunches before school, rides when the weather was bad, late-night conversations when he could not sleep, and the small routines that made up our life together.
