My Father’s Midnight Call Saved Us—But I Wish I’d Never Looked Out the Window

was empty in a way that had nothing to do with furniture. Jay’s shoes sat by the front door. His half-finished block tower stood on the dining table, the blocks still arranged in the careful, widening base he had been building that last morning when the world was whole.

I touched the tower like it was a relic.

At 11:43 p.m., the back door lock clicked—soft,continue reading …