“What is it?”
Now, what you need to understand about my husband is that he wasn’t a cruel man to strangers. But inside our home, he believed softness ruined boys.
***
Richard walked into the kitchen carrying a duffel bag I’d never seen before. He didn’t look at me. He set the bag down beside Ethan’s chair with a soft thud that made the pencil freeze in my son’s hand.
“Our son needs to become a man,” my husband said. “You have until noon.”
The coffee in my cup stopped moving. So did everything else.
