I had waved him off every Saturday morning believing I knew exactly where my son was and what he was doing, and I had been wrong about all of it, and the wrongness of it, the sheer amount of my son’s life that had been happening in a place I could not see, made me feel, for a moment, as though the floor of my knowledge of my own child had dropped away entirely.” I stood there, and the floor of the world seemed to give way beneath me, and I turned to my son, this thirteen-year-old boy with grease on his face and cracked hands, and I could barely form the words.

“Caleb,” I said.

“Those medical bills were cleared.

Years ago.

The insurance took care of it, after your father passed.

I told you.

I told you everything was handled.”

Chapter 19 — The Letters in the Closet