She looked at me.
“Mom.”
“I’m asking.”
“I barely know him.”
“Okay.”
We watched the dryer turn.
Then Maddie said, “But he was kind when he didn’t have to be.”
That evening, she folded the hoodie and placed it beside the front door. I thought about Tyler.
I’d known him since he was seven. Once, after he’d fallen off his bike in front of our house, I’d cleaned his scraped knee while he sat crying on our porch.
Somewhere along the way, familiarity had started feeling like proof of character.
It wasn’t.
The next morning, Maddie picked up the folded gray hoodie.
Before leaving, she turned around.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“If something like that happens again, I’ll call you.”
My throat tightened.
“I’d like that.”
She nodded and walked outside.
I watched my daughter head down the steps with that enormous hoodie tucked beneath her arm.
When she’d walked into my kitchen wearing it, I’d looked at another boy’s clothes and wondered what Maddie had done.
Now I understood I’d been asking the wrong question.
She hadn’t come home wearing another boy’s hoodie because she’d betrayed Tyler.
She’d come home wearing it because the boy she’d trusted had made her feel disposable, and someone who barely knew her had decided she shouldn’t have to get home alone.
