A couple of hours before all hell broke loose, I was in bed, awake since five, pondering the circumstances that had returned me, at the age of forty-one, to my childhood home.
It wasn’t that the room was exactly the same as when I’d moved out almost twenty years ago. The Ferrari poster no longer hung over the blue-striped wallpaper, and the kit I built of the starship Enterprise—hardened amberlike droplets of glue visible on the hull—no longer sat on the dresser. But it was the same dresser. And it was the same wallpaper. And this was the same single bed.
Sure, I’d spent the night in here a few times over the years, as a visitor. But to be back here as a resident? To be living here? With my parents, and my son, Ethan?
God, what a fucking state of affairs. How had it come to this?
It wasn’t that I didn’t know the answer to that question. It was complicated, but I knew.
The descent had begun five years ago, after my wife, Jan, passed away. A sad story, and not one worth rehashing here. After half a decade, there were things I’d had no choice but to put behind me. I’d grown into my role of single father. I was raising Ethan, nine years old now, on my own. I’m not saying that made me a hero. I’m just trying to explain how things unfolded.
