Three state vehicles in a parking lot.

Five children pulled apart and buckled into different back seats.

The doors closing one after another, and the sound those kids would make — the specific sound of a child watching the last of their family driven off behind glass.

I know that sound.

I have made that sound.

I was four when they drove my baby brother away, and I have never in my life heard anything like the noise I made, or the noise he made back through the glass, two small children screaming for each other across a widening gap of asphalt while the adults said soothing things that meant nothing.

That sound lives in me still.