I told myself not to panic. Maybe his phone had lost charge. Maybe he’d gone into class.
And still, something older and sharper kept telling me I knew my son too well for this to be nothing.
I typed a message and deleted it three times before sending: “Call me right now.”
Ten minutes later, my phone rang. Unknown number.
“Hello, are you Tom’s mother?”
My grip tightened. “Yes. What happened?”
A pause, the kind that tells you the person on the other end wishes they weren’t holding this piece of someone else’s life.
Maybe his phone had lost charge.
“Ma’am, I’m calling from your son’s college,” a man replied. “He left something for you.”
“Left something? What do you mean?”
“Tom asked me to call you today and make sure you got it,” he said. “He said it was important.”
Panic seized me. “Where is my son?”
“He didn’t say,” the man admitted. “He just left a box.”
I was already standing. If this were something simple, Tom would have called me himself.
I grabbed my keys and headed out before I could second-guess it.
“He just left a box.”
The campus looked insultingly normal. Students crossed the quad with coffee cups, laughing at things that had nothing to do with my anxiety. I parked badly and hurried toward the building.
A young guy was waiting outside, a skinny college kid in a gray hoodie. Tom had planned this carefully enough to make it look calm from the outside.
“You’re Tom’s mom?” he asked the moment I approached.
