He didn’t know what to say to that.
No one ever did.
I live — and still live — in a small rented house in Jurupa Valley. When it rains, water slips through a crack above the kitchen sink. When the wind blows hard enough, the windows hum like they’re remembering something.
I clean houses three days a week. My knuckles split in winter. Bleach dries your skin until it burns. But work keeps your mind from collapsing in on itself.
I cook rice and beans most nights. Sometimes chicken if there’s overtime. I eat slowly. Out of habit, not hunger.
Christopher was my only child.
A software engineer. Brilliant, but quiet about it. The kind of man who noticed everything and spoke only when it mattered.
Seven years ago, he was shot in what the police labeled a carjacking. One bullet. One suspect never found. One file stamped CLOSED far too quickly.
Two weeks before he died, he sat at my kitchen table and said something that made no sense to me at the time.
“If anything ever happens to me, Mom… go to the bank. Ask about the account. Don’t stop. Even if they tell you it doesn’t exist.”
I didn’t understand digital systems. Or financial codes. Or corporate fraud.
But I understood when my son was serious.