Caleb stood beside me in a little navy suit that I had pressed myself that morning, his hair combed flat, his face bright with an excitement he could not have explained.

He thought it was a party.

He thought a kind man had invited us into a beautiful house and that everyone was happy.

He had no idea that every word I spoke that day, every vow I made to a man I barely knew, was a rope I was throwing across a chasm to pull my son back from the edge of it.

I looked at my boy smiling up at me in his navy suit, and I made my promises, and I meant the only one that truly mattered, which was the silent one I made to him.