Chapter 21 - The Eye Contact
Through the glass, through the tears blurring my vision, our eyes met.
Leo stared at me sitting on the hallway floor.
His dark eyes were no longer filled with the fiery defiance of yesterday morning.
They were filled with an old, heavy, agonizing question.
He remembered.
He remembered the scalding porch. He remembered the brass mail slot.
He remembered calling for his mother while the television screamed on the other side of the oak door.
He slowly lifted his small left hand toward the glass, his fingers trembling.
He pointed a single, shaking finger toward his chest.
He wasn't asking for his inhaler.
He was asking why.
David looked up from the bed, following Leo's gaze to where I was kneeling outside.
David's face remained cold, set in stone, showing no forgiveness, no relief for me.
He reached out and gently lowered Leo's arm back down to the bed, blocking his view of the door.
"Don't look over there, buddy," David whispered to him gently. "Just focus on Daddy."
The deputy outside stepped in front of my view, blocking the glass entirely.
"Mrs. Vance, you need to step back to the waiting room," the deputy said firmly.
I stood up slowly on shaking legs, staring at the dark fabric of the officer's uniform.
I turned and walked down the long, cold corridor toward the empty waiting room.
My son was alive, but the mother he once knew was gone forever.
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I had saved his body by calling 911, but I had broken his spirit behind a locked door.
And as I sat alone under the harsh fluorescent lights, waiting for Monday morning's arraignment, I knew my real sentence had already begun.
