“The thing where you act like you’re preparing for a hurricane, not a holiday.”
“I’m preparing for a teenage boy,” I muttered, not looking up.
“He’s not a teenager. He’s a college kid.”
“College kids are just teenagers with crippling debt,” I retorted.
Mark sighed and set his mug down. “Emma said he’s her friend. That’s all we know.”
“That’s all she wants us to know,” I corrected him. Because I knew my daughter. Emma didn’t bring home the people who were doing fine. She brought home the quiet ones. The ones who didn’t look you in the eye because eye contact felt like a luxury they couldn’t afford. The ones who had learned how to disappear so the adults around them wouldn’t have to notice what they were failing to provide.
I slid the enormous turkey into the oven like it was a peace offering to the universe. Then I wiped my hands on a dish towel and stared out the kitchen window, watching the empty street like I was expecting a storm to roll in.
They arrived around two. Emma burst through the door first, cheeks flushed from the cold, moving with the restless energy of someone rediscovering a space that didn’t belong to an institution.
And behind her was the boy.
Not a boy, really. A young man. Nineteen, maybe twenty. He was tall in a way that made him fold himself smaller in the doorway, as if consciously trying not to take up too much space. A knit cap was pulled low over his eyes. A hoodie, faded and thin, looked like it had been washed a thousand times and still smelled of old laundry and bus seats.
