On my 16 birthday, my father smashed the medal I had spent five years earning, my little brother threw my suitcase out a second-story window, and my mother told me I could come home after I learned how to stop being selfish.
Chapter 3
I walked out of the research institute at thirty-one carrying one suitcase.
The gates opened on a cold November morning.
Dr. Warren came outside to see me off.
Fifteen years had put more gray in his hair and a permanent bend in his shoulders, but he still looked at me the same way he had when I was sixteen.
As though I was promising but unfinished.
“Take two months off,” he said.
“I don’t need two months.”
“That is why I ordered you to take them.”
I smiled.
He squeezed my shoulder.
“You have somewhere to go?”
“No.”
He frowned.
“I’ll find somewhere.”
That satisfied him.
The sedan drove me into a world that felt almost imaginary.
I had not used a normal smartphone in fifteen years.
I had no social media accounts.
No public work history.
My published research appeared under classified team identifiers.
When I searched my own name online, almost nothing appeared.
It was strange to be thirty-one and digitally invisible.
Financially, however, I was fine.
Fifteen years of stipends, bonuses, and project compensation had accumulated because I had almost nowhere to spend them.
I bought a condo without a mortgage.
The realtor kept talking about the kitchen and the building amenities.
I barely heard her.
I was looking at the windows.
“South-facing?” I asked.
“Yes. You’ll get sunlight most of the day.”
“I’ll take it.”
The first morning after moving in, I stood barefoot in the living room while winter sunlight crossed the hardwood floor.
I laughed softly.
At sixteen, I had been told wanting to keep a sunny bedroom made me selfish.
At thirty-one, I had bought the light myself.
Twelve days after leaving the institute, my new phone rang.
Unknown number.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Then a man said, “Ethan?”
Something in his voice pulled me backward fifteen years.
“Josh?”
He inhaled sharply.
“Yeah.”
I sat down.
“How did you get this number?”
“Mr. Barrett.”
Neither of us spoke.
Then Josh started crying.
Not loudly.
He was trying desperately not to.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I waited.
“I shouldn’t have thrown your bag.”
More silence.
“I was fourteen. That doesn’t excuse it. I just… I need you to know I remember it every day.”
“Stop crying.”
That only made him cry harder for a moment.
Eventually he steadied himself.
“Mom and Dad want to see you.”
“I figured.”
“Do you?”
I looked around my new condo.
Sunlight stretched across the coffee table.
“We’ll see.”
“Can I keep your number?”
“Sure.”
The next morning, I woke to thirty-seven missed calls.
Mom.
More than twenty messages waited.
Ethan, it’s Mom.
Please call me.
Where are you?
Please come home.
Some were frantic.
Others were almost incoherent.
Then I reached the final message, sent at 4:17 in the morning.
I never should have called you selfish. You’re my boy. I’m so sorry, baby. Please come home.
I set down the phone.
I expected rage.
Or satisfaction.
I felt neither.
The truth was harder.
I no longer hated my mother because the part of me that had desperately needed her apology belonged to a sixteen-year-old who no longer existed.
Dad called two days later.
His voice shocked me.
He had once sounded enormous.
Now I heard age.
“Ethan?”
“Yeah.”
“You doing all right?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to see you.”
He hesitated.
“Son.”
I stared at the ceiling.
“Christmas.”
There was silence.
Then he exhaled shakily.
“Christmas?”
“I’ll come then.”
“Okay. Yes. Christmas.”
After hanging up, I wondered why I had agreed.
Maybe curiosity.
Maybe obligation.
Maybe some small surviving part of that boy wanted to know whether sweet-and-sour ribs still smelled the same.
Whatever the reason, I had one condition for myself.
I would visit.
I would not pretend.
