When my 14-year-old son, Mason, told me he wanted to live with his dad after the divorce, I said yes. Not because my heart agreed—if it were up to me, I’d have kept him under my roof, under my eyes, under my wing forever—but because I didn’t want to be the mother who stood between a boy and his father. Eddie was trying again.
That’s what I told myself. He’d always been the “fun parent”: midnight pancakes, video games on school nights, backward baseball cap on the soccer sidelines. He promised he was ready to be more present, more reliable.
He wanted “a real chance” with his son. So I let Mason go. On paper, it didn’t feel like losing him.
I still had weekends. I could call. I could visit.
I repeated that to myself like a mantra. You’re not losing him. You’re giving him space.
But if I’m honest, the day he left, something in me cracked quietly down the middle. The Slow Fade
At first, everything looked fine. Mason called a lot those first few weeks.
He sent selfies with burnt waffles, blurry pictures of movie nights, goofy snapshots of him and Eddie arguing over which pizza toppings were “non-negotiable.”
I saved every single picture. Watched every video twice. I missed him so much it physically hurt, but I told myself:
He sounds happy.
This is good. This is what he needs. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, the calls thinned out.
Long updates became short replies. Short replies turned into one-word answers. One-word answers dissolved into silence.
That was when someone else started calling. His teachers. “Hi, Claire, this is Mrs.
Hunt… Mason didn’t turn in his English essay. He said he forgot. That’s not like him, is it?”
Then another:
“He seems… distant.
He’s here, but he’s not really here. Is everything okay at home?”
And then the worst one:
“We caught him cheating on a math quiz. He looked… lost.”
That word snagged in my chest.
Lost. Not impulsive. Not defiant.
Lost. That wasn’t my Mason. My son was the kid who checked every answer twice, who panicked over a B+, who once cried because he left a group project partner to do too much work.
Something was wrong. The Silence That Said Everything
That night, I called him. No answer.
I texted. Called again. Left a voicemail.
Nothing. I sat on the edge of my bed, phone in hand, staring at the last picture he’d sent: him and Eddie, grinning, holding up a charred pizza like it was a triumph. It didn’t feel funny anymore.
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