I ran every red light my conscience would allow and several it would not, and by the time I pulled into the diner’s small parking lot, my hands were shaking so hard I could barely get the car into park.

Whatever was waiting for me inside, I was certain, as I ran for the door, that it was going to be the worst thing.

I was right that my whole understanding of my son was about to be overturned.

I was completely wrong about which direction it would turn.

I had braced, that whole drive, for a fall, for the sickening downward lurch of discovering that my child was worse than I had believed, caught in something dark, damaged in some way I had missed.

Every scenario I rehearsed on that drive pointed downward, toward disappointment, toward danger, toward a diminished picture of the boy I loved.