I pulled back and looked at him. My eyes were doing the thing I’d been trying to prevent since the driveway.
“I thought I was the one holding everything together, sweetie. I thought I was the only one keeping this family upright.”
Logan looked at me for a moment with an expression I hadn’t seen on him in a long time, something open, a little tired, and completely honest.
“No, Mom, we both are,” he said.
“I thought I was the only one keeping this family upright.”
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***
Later that evening, after Officer Benny was long gone and Andrew had fallen back asleep on the couch after his bowl of chicken broth, I sat at the kitchen table and watched Logan rinse dishes at the sink.
He was humming something under his breath while he worked, low and easy, a song I half-recognized from somewhere I couldn’t place.
I sat very still, listening.
It hit me then that I hadn’t heard Logan hum in over a year. Somewhere in the noise, the exhaustion, and the worry, that small, ordinary thing had slipped away without me noticing. And now it was back, quiet and easy, like it had been waiting for the right moment to return.
I sat very still, listening.
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