shirt. He was stronger than her even then and pushed her aside easily.
"Where are you going?" she asked, her eyes burning with unreleased tears.
"I'm leaving and am never coming back."
Michael squeezing her arm brought her back to reality, and she looked at him with wide eyes. Was he still angry at her for slapping him? It had only happened once, and she still felt terrible about it, even now. But what was she supposed to do to make it right, especially today of all days?
"I…do remember," she whispered.
"When I came home, you remember what I did?" Michael asked.
That she remembered too.
She sat on the couch, shivering, with her car keys in hand. She had just gotten back from visiting all of Michael's friends that she knew about, searching for him. Nobody knew where he'd gone. She gripped a cup full of vodka in her hand, the only think that stopped her from leaping out the window and screaming out Michael's name like a raving lunatic. She'd even called the police station, but they hadn't taken her seriously when she'd told them that Michael had only been gone for four hours. But four hours was enough. Michael would easily be able to escape in that amount of time, into the unknown and out of her sight forever. A tear fell down her cheek, a silent prayer to God in hopes that her son would come home.
That was when the front door squeaked open. She went rigid, sitting upright, and looked at the threshold. Michael stood at the door, shivering, his face pale. She let out a whimper of remorse and leapt toward him. When she reached him, she expected him to push her away because she smelled like a bad mixture of vomit and vodka, but he only held on tight, moaning.
"I'm so sorry, baby," she said. "I'm so sorry."
He was silent and then, a moment later, he said, "No…I'm sorry."
"Michael, what?"
He pushed her away, turned, and then went up the stairs.
Michael once again ripped her from the memory by saying her name. She blinked, staring into his eyes, and smelled the peppermint on his breath. A small smile was on his face.
"Yes, of course," she said.
"I went to my friend's house," Michael said. "I snuck in through the window. He didn't know that I was there."
Her blood went cold at the thought of where this story was going, and all she could do was grunt, "Uh-huh."
"His father came home." Michael shuddered. "He wailed on my friend and called him all of these awful names. I can still hear my friend's screaming in my ears…It was horrible. But then, I started thinking—he has two parents, and they hurt him and called him names."
Horror filled her. She knew who he was talking about—Boris. The poor neighborhood boy who had ended up going to jail. He and Michael had had a falling out sometime during junior high.
"Anyway, I thought about how you've never hurt me and how you've showed up to every one of my games even when you worked a twelve hour day. You never forgot me. Ever," Michael said. "That was the night that I realized that it didn't matter that I had just one parent—because I had the best one in the world."
Another sob left her throat. Being a good parent to Michael was all that she had ever wanted. His words healed her and hurt her all at once, because she didn't want to let him go.
"Thank you, Michael. Thank you for telling me that."
She took a deep breath and remembered how hard it was, waiting for him to come back that night that he ran away. She shut her eyes, breathed, and controlled her feelings. The pain was so intense that she could taste it on her tongue and feel it prickling her skin. But when she opened her eyes, she knew that she was as ready as she would ever be. It was like pointing a gun at her head or stabbing herself with a knife—she was preparing herself for the ultimate form of pain.
"Go on, Michael," she said, feeling her fingers push the trigger and fire the bullet into her own brain. "It's time for you to go."
Leaning forward, he hugged her one last time, tight. He then stepped back, smiled, saluted and then turned around, keys in hand. Shuddering, she pressed her fingers against her breast and watched him walk out the door. She walked over to the window and watched him get into his car, pull out, and then drive away. That was the moment that she knew that things would never be the same again, for her or for him.
She let a sob burst from her chest and she slid to her knees, hunched over the carpet. A wail of sadness left her throat, reminding her that there was no way to master the art of letting go. It didn't matter how many times she had to do it. With someone she loved as much as Michael, it was always going to hurt.
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About the author:
Stephanie Campbell is a novelist in Ogden, Utah, where she lives with her family and too many dogs. Her interests include history, traveling, classic movies, and biographies. She published her first book at seventeen and has continued to write with the goal of being a career novelist. She is the author of the novels Poachers, Dragon Night, Tasting Silver, Keeping Freedom, Late but not Never, Case Closed, Icy Tales of Draga, E is for Eternity, Specimen X, and P.S. I Killed My Mother, all of which are being published or have been published by traditional houses.
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