When I got home from a night shift at 6:14 a.m., my husband was in the guest room with my sister, and my five-year-old son was asleep on the cold kitchen tile clutching his stuffed elephant.
I picked up my boy and left without waking either of them.
By sunrise, I knew the guest room was only the part they had been careless enough to let me see.
The porch light was off when I pulled into the driveway that morning.
For three years, Marcus had always left that little yellow light burning whenever I worked overnight at St. Clement’s.
It was such a small thing that I had turned it into a joke between us.
I used to call him my lighthouse keeper.
After twelve hours on my feet, with my scrubs wrinkled and my brain still moving through medication times, patient charts, and the hundred small emergencies that fill a nurse’s shift, seeing that light usually meant home.
It meant Marcus knew I was coming.
It meant Noah was asleep upstairs.
It meant I could finally stop being responsible for everyone else for a few hours.
But at 6:14 that morning, the house was completely dark.
I sat in the driveway for several seconds with both hands on the steering wheel, staring toward the porch.
