I did not confront him that afternoon, because anger has a way of distorting judgment, and judgment was the only weapon I could afford to trust, so instead I followed Darren at a careful distance, keeping two cars between us whenever traffic allowed, while a quiet dread gathered in my chest with every turn he made away from the main roads and deeper into a part of town where neglect seemed to linger like a permanent resident.
He pulled into the driveway of a narrow rental house whose paint had long surrendered to weather and indifference, while the yard lay buried beneath tangled weeds that spoke not of hardship but of abandonment, the sort of overgrowth that revealed how thoroughly a place had been forgotten by care, and I sat there watching from across the street, gripping my steering wheel as if steadiness could somehow anchor the storm rising inside me.