Why would you carry all of this by yourself?

Why wouldn’t you let me help you?” And he said, muffled against my shoulder, the thing that broke my heart clean in two.

“Because you were already carrying everything else, Mom.

Dad wasn’t here anymore to help you.

I’m the man of the house now.

It was my job.” I pulled back and held his face in my two hands and looked him in the eyes.

“You are thirteen years old, Caleb,” I said, and I was weeping openly now.