But there is a harder version, the version where the math is wrong and the story does not fit and your gut will not settle, and that was the version I had found myself in.

I kept telling myself it was the ordinary kind, the harmless kind, a boy entitled to his privacy.

And underneath that reassurance, growing quietly, was the fear that it was the other kind, and that whatever my son was hiding was not a small pulling-away at all but something with real weight to it, something that could hurt him, something I needed to know and did not.

Chapter 6 — The Light Was Still On