I am shaken by this story of loss. Shaken mostly because when I examine it beside my own grievances, the Parmalees’ loss dwarfs them. I can’t get back any of the time I have lost with Tony, but I can do something they will never be able to do: I can call him. I’ve made it a policy not to bother him, not to impose my maternal neediness on his independence. My calls have purpose. When he calls me, it is usually with equal purpose—a status update, a holiday greeting. We could be former coworkers, not mother and son. I have meticulously nurtured the wound dealt when he left, until it has become a scar. And I sit in the Parmalees’ neighbor’s house and hold the last school photograph of their lost child and I am filled with regret. No, something more. I feel ashamed.

Mitch sits quietly, watching me. Jennifer has excused herself to finish getting ready for work. The photograph of Stacy is on the table. Abruptly, I pull my phone out of my back pocket and go out onto Jennifer’s deck, carefully closing the sliding door behind me.

I just want to hear the sound of his voice.

The phone rings almost four times. Long enough that he can recognize the number and let it go to voice mail. But he doesn’t. “Hey, Mom.”

“Tony.”

Clearly there is something in my voice that warns him. “You okay? What’s up?”

He didn’t leave me; he left a lousy situation. I have treated him like he chose Anthony over me. He chose a better life, which is all I had ever promised him. An unfulfilled promise.

“I’m fine, but all of this business, you know, with my dad and losing Mack has made me think.”

“About what?” Do I imagine that he sounds wary? In our family, grudges are a contact sport.

I am ready to throw in the towel and let my son know, before fate, or God, or luck, decrees that I have run out of time, that I love him. I want to tell my son, a grown man now, that life is too short not to tend to the relationship you care most about. So I just say it. “I love you.”

There is a pause, a furry silence between the cell phones.

“And I love you, too, Mom.”

*   *   *