Once we entered my bedroom, she closed the door.
Then locked it.
“You’re scaring me.”
“You can go with Noah,” she said. “But I need one promise first.”
I immediately became angry.
“If this has anything to do with Noah having Down syndrome—”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then what?”
Mom sat on my bed.
“Do you remember when your father left?”
I frowned.
“What does that have to do with tonight?”
“You were twelve.”
Then she said something that caught me completely off guard.
“You stopped eating lunch.”
My arms fell to my sides.
“How do you know?”
“Noah told me.”
I stared at her.
She explained that during the worst part of the divorce, Noah once found her crying alone in her car in the school parking lot.
She thought nobody had seen her.
But Noah had.
“He asked me if you were broken,” Mom whispered.
My throat tightened.
“Why?”
“Because you weren’t eating. You weren’t laughing much. He noticed you sitting alone.”
“What did you tell him?”
