So when I heard his footsteps in the hall, I smiled.
Then I saw his face.
“Mom,” he said, and his voice broke right down the middle. “I need to confess something.”
I switched off the burner and pulled out a chair.
“Come here, honey. Sit. Tell me what’s wrong.”
He didn’t sit. He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, looked back over his shoulder, and turned the lock on the front door. Then he checked it twice.
“Is anybody else here?”
“No. It’s just me.” My heart had started to thud. “Did something happen with Ezra?”
“No! And whatever you do, don’t call him. Don’t call anybody in that family.”
My stomach twisted into a knot.
Wyatt and Ezra had been inseparable since they were in diapers. The Coles lived four houses down from us on Juniper Lane in Cedar Bluff, and Ezra’s mother, Renata, had been my closest friend for twenty years. The boys were born two months apart. They learned to ride bikes on the same driveway. They lost their front teeth the same summer.
