The gravel of the driveway crunched under my tires, a sound that triggered a decade-old nausea deep in my gut. The house loomed against the twilight sky—a sprawling, two-story colonial with pristine white siding and black shutters. It was the picture of the American Dream, the kind of house where nothing bad was ever supposed to happen.
It was the house where I had lost everything.
“Mom?”
The small voice from the backseat broke my trance. I glanced in the rearview mirror. Leo was clutching his seatbelt strap, his hazel eyes wide and scanning the property. He looked so much like him in that moment that I almost flinched, but I forced a smile.
“We’re here, bug,” I said, my voice steady only because I willed it to be. “Remember what I told you?”
“Be polite,” he recited. “Don’t fidget. And if I want to leave, I just squeeze your hand three times.”
“That’s my boy.”
