Then we turned into the living room.
David looked up, blinking behind his glasses.
He was seventeen then, all dark hair and sharp cheekbones and too-old eyes. He had cerebral palsy, used a power wheelchair most days and a manual one when the battery acted up, and had more dignity in one lifted eyebrow than most grown men I’d met in my life.
His eyes went from me to the police. “Mom?”
The two officers stopped so abruptly it was almost theatrical. Detective Rodriguez froze, too.
For a long beat, nobody said anything.
David looked down at himself, then back at them. “Either somebody died,” he said, “or this is going to be the weirdest parent-teacher conference ever.”
One of the officers exhaled under his breath.
I folded my arms over my chest and said the words that would replay in my mind for months afterward.
“My son is physically incapable of doing what you think he did. So if you’re looking for a thief, you need to start with the man who used his name.”
