“You sure?”
Evan glanced toward me.
Then said:
“Help somebody when they’re stuck.”
My eyes burned.
The father put his wallet away.
“I can do that.”
Evan jumped back onto his bike.
Then yelled toward me:
“Mom!”
“What?”
“Time me!”
I raised my phone.
He pushed off.
That evening, I found the old bus map sitting on the kitchen table.
I unfolded it.
The red circles were still there on one side.
TIRES.
HAIRCUT.
STORE LADY.
Names from the hardest year of our lives.
Then I flipped it over.
A new route had been drawn across the back.
The bike trail.
Beside it, Evan had written:
BEST: 38 SEC.
I smiled.
For six months, I thought my son was hiding money from me.
What he was really hiding was grief.
He had convinced himself that loving his father meant finishing every responsibility Jeremy had left behind.
But grief had turned kindness into obligation.
And obligation had turned a thirteen-year-old boy into someone who believed he had to take care of everyone before he was allowed to want something for himself.
