Mrs. Davis, Mr. Henderson, Mrs. Lopez with her grandkids. They were all watching me. They all heard it when Valerie opened the window wider and threw a plastic bottle of water at me like I was trash.

“There! So you can’t say I left you to dehydrate.” The bottle landed at my feet and rolled onto the sidewalk.

My name is Sarah. I am fifty-seven years old. And what I’m about to tell you is how that afternoon, sitting on the curb in front of my own home, I learned that a mother’s love can be blind. But justice always arrives, even if it’s late, even if it hurts. Because when my son, Matthew, arrived an hour later, what he did left the entire neighborhood in stunned silence.