I stepped away from the table.
“Noah? What happened?”
“Please come home.”
The room behind me disappeared.
The projector, the coffee cups, the spreadsheet, the people in button-down shirts staring at me over their laptops.
All of it became background noise.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked.
“She’s not here.”
His voice shook on every word.
“Who is there with you?”
He tried to answer and started crying harder.
“Noah,” I said, slower now. “Listen to me. Tell Daddy what happened.”
There was a tiny pause, like he was looking over his shoulder.
Then he whispered, “Mommy’s boyfriend… Travis… hit me with the baseball bat. My arm hurts bad. He said if I cry, he’ll hit me again.”
For a second, I could not understand the sentence.
I understood every word by itself.
Baseball bat.
Hit me.
Arm hurts.
Again.
