Two days before seventh grade, my twelve-year-old son, Noah, called and said he wasn’t coming home. My heart stopped when he added, “Jessica’s better, Mom. We can be a real family here.” Then I heard his stepmother whispering behind him.
Noah had lived mostly with me since his father, Matt, and I divorced. We had our routines—Friday pizza, Sunday pancakes, yellow notes in his lunch. He had spent the summer with Matt and Jessica and had called me almost every night. Three days earlier, he had even asked about his blue hoodie.
Something had changed. When I arrived at Matt’s house, I heard Jessica arguing with him through an open window. She said she was tired of Noah leaving every weekend and tired of Matt being miserable afterward. Then she said something that made me stop: “Maybe living here means you finally stop acting like half your life is somewhere else.”
