It started six months ago. He’d leave the house at 2 a.m. on that bike. Sometimes he wouldn’t come back for three days.
He’d come home with bruises on his face. Cuts on his hands. Mud caked up his back.
I asked him where he’d been. He just said, “Dad, you wouldn’t understand.”
I thought he was running with a bad crew. I thought he was hauling something he shouldn’t be. I thought he was going to end up shot in a ditch somewhere.
His mother stopped sleeping. She’d sit by the window every night staring at the empty driveway. I watched her get ten years older in a month.
So I called the sheriff. I told him I thought my son was tied up in something dirty. The sheriff said without proof there wasn’t much he could do.
So I lied. I said I’d seen something in his saddlebag I shouldn’t have. I said I was scared.
