Chapter 14 — My Son

By the time the final court date arrived, I had stopped bracing for the difficult boy everyone had warned me about.

I had waited four months of visits and then months more under my own roof, and he had never come.

I want to be clear that I was not expecting Silas to be a perfect son, either.

He had hard days.

He had moods that closed over him like weather, mornings he could barely speak, nights I heard him awake long after he should have been sleeping.