will know my name.”
I could not speak for a moment.
He looked up at me, serious and small and braver than any person I had ever known.
“You knew my name,” he said.
I moved around the table and knelt beside him.
“I will always know your name.”
Oliver leaned into me, paint on his fingers, his shoulders finally loose. Outside, the rain fell gently, nothing like the storm he had crossed. On the table, the dinosaur dried under the warm kitchen light, no longer red, not yet fully blue, becoming something else one careful brushstroke at a time.
And for the first time since the call from the fire station, my son left the kitchen door open behind him without looking back.
