Eli’s face changed.
Not confusion.
Panic.
“No, Dad,” he said. “Please. Mom said if police came, they would take me away and put you in jail.”
That was the moment I understood the damage was not only in his body.
It had been planted deep in his mind.
I knelt again and held his cold hands between mine.
“Listen to me,” I said. “You are not in trouble. You did nothing wrong. Nothing.”
He began to cry without sound.
Even crying had rules now.
The ambulance came first.
The police cruiser pulled in less than a minute later, tires hissing against the curb.
Curtains shifted in two houses across the street.
A dog barked once behind a fence.
For the first time all evening, I stopped caring who saw.
An EMT stepped inside with a medical bag in one hand.
She knelt in front of Eli.
Her expression changed before she said a word.
