Chapter 22: Syd Faces His FearSyd remembered that morning now. The morning his mother had left him forever. Forever.
A Tuesday. He had gym class on Tuesdays. Basketball. He remembered his mother in the bedroom, packing her clothes into a hard brown suitcase. He’d thought maybe she’d been going on a trip like that time before, but then he’d noticed the marble note books in the fold of the suitcase and a lump had grown in his tiny throat. Mom, he’d said. He’d been scared of the look on her face. The resolute emptiness in her gaze, as she’d piled things, her things but not his things, into the suitcase.
It’s better this way, she’d said. If I take you with me, he’ll find us both and kill us. If it’s just me, he’ll have to keep you and raise you, out of spite, she’d said. All that and some mo
