“No.”
“Drugs?”
“No.”
“Did he hurt younger children?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Then what happened?”
Denise paused.
“Different things.”
Then she said the word I would come to hate.
“Luke is complicated.”
Something sharp rose inside me.
I remembered Noah after his father died.
He had stopped speaking in class.
Teachers who didn’t understand his grief started calling him difficult.
Complicated.
As if a grieving eleven-year-old were an inconvenience.
Over the years, I had learned that adults often call children complicated when the child’s pain makes the adult uncomfortable.
“I still want to meet him,” I said.
Luke stood when I approached him.
That surprised me.
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He was nearly as tall as I was.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Caroline.”
He gestured toward the empty chair beside him.
“You can sit here, ma’am.”
I smiled.
“I’m forty-seven. Not ninety.”
His mouth twitched.
“I wasn’t implying anything.”
