The first few days, Tyler called every evening. He sounded like himself, telling me about Biscuit, Sibil’s dog, about a pond near her house where he’d seen frogs, about a board game they’d played after dinner. Normal, fine, good even.
Then around day five, something shifted. The calls got shorter. Tyler’s voice got flatter. When I asked, “What did you do today?” he started giving me single-sentence answers: “Not much. Just stayed inside. It was fine.” I told myself he was just tired. Kids hit a wall midway through long trips. It happened.
But on night 8 of 14, my phone rang at 11:45. I grabbed it immediately when I saw Tyler’s name on the screen.
“Hey, baby, what’s wrong? Why are you still up?”
His voice was very small. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Did something happen?”
A long pause. “Not really.”
That pause. That “not really.” Something in the way he said it made my chest tighten immediately.
“Tyler,” I said carefully. “You know you can tell me anything, right? No matter what it is.”
“I know.”
“Are you okay over there?”
Another pause. Then, “Yeah, I’m okay.”
He didn’t sound okay. We talked for a few more minutes about nothing in particular—his library book, a show he’d been watching—and then he said he was going to try to sleep. We said good night.
I hung up. I lay in the dark for a long time. And then I did something I had never done before in 9 years of parenting. I texted Tyler. Not a call, a text, because I didn’t want him to feel any pressure.
I wrote: “Hey, if anything ever feels off while you’re there, anything at all, you can use your iPad to record it just for yourself so you remember it clearly when you tell me. You don’t have to, but you can. I love you.”
He read it. He sent back a single heart emoji.
I didn’t know if he would do anything with that. I didn’t know what I was even expecting. I just knew that something in my gut—that wordless, persistent feeling that something was not right—was telling me to say it.
Six days later, Richard pulled into our driveway with Tyler in the passenger seat. Tyler walked through our front door and didn’t look like Tyler. He was quiet in that particular way that isn’t peaceful. His shoulders were pulled up toward his ears. His eyes went to the floor before they found me. He moved through the entryway carefully, like someone navigating a space they weren’t entirely sure was safe.