His face crumpled.
“I thought about her every day.”
“That did not help her.”
“I know.”
“Thinking about us did not tell us you were breathing.”
“I know.”
Levi sat silently in the back seat, crying without making a sound.
Jesse turned slightly toward him.
“I’m sorry you had to hear this.”
Levi wiped his face.
“I think I needed to.”
Then he looked at his father with a maturity no seventeen-year-old should have needed.
“And I think they need to hear it too.”
Jesse closed his eyes.
“Yes,” he whispered. “They do.”
I called my mother from that parking lot.
I could not wait.
I could not board a plane first. I could not sleep on it. I could not carry that news alone for even another hour.
