He gathered the bills quickly and shoved them into his backpack.
“What’s all that money?”
“It’s just the bike money. Sal pays me in small bills, so it looks like more than it is.”
His explanation sounded reasonable, but his voice did not. I stood there for another moment, feeling that something was wrong without knowing exactly what it was.
A few weeks later, Evan came home almost two hours late from work. His shoes were covered in mud, his jacket was torn at the shoulder, and there was a fresh scrape along the side of his face.
He claimed he had slipped near the creek while walking home, but the damage to his clothes looked less like a fall and more like a struggle. When I asked about that week’s paycheck, Evan lowered his eyes and became strangely quiet.
“I put it somewhere safe.”
That night, I lay awake staring at the ceiling. The missing bike, the hidden cash, the torn clothes, and the frightened look on my son’s face no longer felt like separate mysteries.
