After he finished eating, Ethan put his plate down and leaned back.<\/p>\n
He looked toward the window.<\/p>\n
The glass had turned dark enough to reflect the living room.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I could see both of us in it.<\/p>\n
I saw my arm resting along the couch.<\/p>\n
I saw the blanket across his knees.<\/p>\n
I saw a mother who wanted an answer badly enough that she had nearly forgotten how to sit still.<\/p>\n
I looked away from the reflection.<\/p>\n
"Mom?"<\/p>\n
"Yes?"<\/p>\n
"Will I go to school tomorrow?"<\/p>\n
I paused.<\/p>\n
It would have been easy to answer based on what usually happened on a school night.<\/p>\n
But this wasn't an ordinary evening, and I didn't know what arrangements might be necessary.<\/p>\n
"We'll decide when we know what we need to do," I told him.<\/p>\n
He frowned slightly.<\/p>\n
"I don't want everyone asking me questions."<\/p>\n
My chest tightened.<\/p>\n
I understood why he might feel that way.<\/p>\n
Adults had been talking about him for hours.<\/p>\n
Even when they spoke quietly, he knew the conversations were about something that had happened to him.<\/p>\n
"I understand," I said.<\/p>\n
He looked at me as though he wanted to know whether I truly did.<\/p>\n
I took his hand.<\/p>\n
"You don't have to figure everything out tonight."<\/p>\n
He looked down at our hands.<\/p>\n
"Okay."<\/p>\n
I wanted to tell him that nobody would ask him anything else.<\/p>\n
I couldn't promise that.<\/p>\n
What I could do was make sure I didn't add unnecessary questions of my own.<\/p>\n
I could also ask Detective Alvarez to explain any next steps in a way Ethan could understand.<\/p>\n
When she returned, I raised the concern.<\/p>\n
I told her Ethan was tired and worried about being questioned again.<\/p>\n
She listened and explained what we should expect as far as she could at that point.<\/p>\n
I paid attention.<\/p>\n
I didn't ask her to promise that there would never be another question.<\/p>\n
Instead, I asked what I should do if Ethan became overwhelmed.<\/p>\n
She gave me guidance, and I made sure I understood it.<\/p>\n
Afterward, I explained the parts Ethan needed to know in simple words.<\/p>\n
He listened without interrupting.<\/p>\n
When I finished, he asked whether he could rest.<\/p>\n
"Of course."<\/p>\n
He settled back against the couch.<\/p>\n
I adjusted the blanket and moved the cup farther from the edge of the table.<\/p>\n
Then I sat beside him.<\/p>\n
I thought about the barber again.<\/p>\n
I remembered the ordinary beginning of the visit and the moment the clippers stopped.<\/p>\n
I remembered how quickly my mind had filled with questions.<\/p>\n
But I still didn't know what the barber had seen or what it meant.<\/p>\n
Repeating the memory could not make those facts appear.<\/p>\n
I had to accept that there were limits to what I could discover by thinking alone.<\/p>\n
Ethan shifted closer to me.<\/p>\n
I rested my hand on his shoulder.<\/p>\n
He didn't ask another question.<\/p>\n
I didn't ask one either.<\/p>\n
We sat together while the officers continued their work elsewhere in the house.<\/p>\n
I couldn't make tomorrow normal by promising that it would be.<\/p>\n
I could make this moment gentler by not demanding that my son help me understand everything.<\/p>\n
For now, that was something I could do.<\/p>\n
After he finished eating, Ethan put his plate down and leaned back. He looked toward the window. The glass had turned dark enough to reflect the living room. For a … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36916,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36896\/revisions\/36916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}