Forty minutes of highway and one stop for gas where I sat at the pump for ninety seconds staring at nothing before my hands remembered how to work.
I didn’t call. Didn’t text. Didn’t announce myself or ask permission or give him time to prepare a face. I wanted the real version – the unwashed, coffee-stained, three-days-in-the-same-hoodie version that Sienna had been documenting like a wildlife photographer tracking an animal in decline. I wanted to see with my own eyes what two weeks of separation had done to the boy who called my mother every morning to ask if I’d eaten breakfast.
His building looked the same. The stairs smelled the same – that particular mix of cleaning product and old carpet that I’d stopped noticing months ago because it had become the smell of going home. Third flo
