When was the last time he had looked at me with warmth that wasn’t performative? When was the last time he asked how I was and actually cared about the answer? When was the last time he touched me without calculation? When was the last time I felt cherished rather than managed?
The answer was so far back I couldn’t find it.
“Mama,” Kenzo whispered suddenly. “Look.”
I followed where he was pointing.
A dark van had turned onto our street.
It moved too slowly to be normal. Too slowly for someone lost. Its windows were heavily tinted, and it came rolling down the block like it was searching for something. Or someone.
My breath stalled when it stopped directly in front of our house.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no.”
The front doors opened.
Two men got out.
Even from that distance, even with the weak street lighting, I knew they did not belong there. They wore dark clothes, hoodies pulled up, and they moved with the loose, deliberate caution of men doing something they did not want seen.
They paused at the front gate and looked around.
I should have called 911 right then. Maybe I would have, in another life. But I was frozen, watching the scene unfold as if I had already slipped into a nightmare that ran on its own rules.
One of the men reached into his pocket.
I expected some kind of tool. A crowbar. Lock picks. Something that would at least fit the story of a burglary.
Instead, he pulled out a key.
A key.
He unlocked our front door like he had every right to enter.
“Mama,” Kenzo whispered from the back seat, voice shaking. “How do they have a key?”
I couldn’t answer.
Because only three keys existed. Mine. Kwesi’s. And the spare he kept locked inside the desk drawer in his office.
The men slipped inside the house without turning on any lights. A moment later, I saw narrow flashlight beams moving behind the curtains.
They weren’t stealing in a hurry.
They were preparing something.
I don’t know how long I sat there staring. Five minutes. Fifteen. Time dissolved. My hands were numb on the steering wheel.
Then I smelled it.
At first it was faint enough that I thought I was imagining it. But then it thickened, sharp and unmistakable, riding the damp Georgia air toward the car.
Gasoline.
“Mama,” Kenzo said, “what’s that smell?”
And then I saw the smoke.
A thin thread at first, leaking from the living room window. Then another from the kitchen. Then an orange pulse behind the curtains.
“No.”
I was out of the car before I knew I had moved.
“No. No, no, no.”
I took two steps toward the house before Kenzo’s small voice cut through my panic.
“Mama, no!”
He was right. I knew he was right. But every instinct in me wanted to run into that house and drag out whatever pieces of my life I still believed I could save.
My wedding dress in the upstairs closet.
The hospital bracelet from when Kenzo was born.
The quilt my grandmother stitched with her own hands.
The framed photos on the hallway table.
The construction-paper drawings stuck to the refrigerator.
All of it inside.
All of it burning.
The flames spread with terrifying speed. In minutes the living room was engulfed. Glass shattered. Fire climbed the walls and leapt toward the second floor.
Toward Kenzo’s room.
Then the sirens started.
Somebody must have seen the smoke and called the fire department, because engines came screaming into the neighborhood just as the dark van peeled away from the curb and vanished around the corner with its lights off.
I stood there shaking so hard my knees nearly buckled. Kenzo had come up behind me and wrapped both arms around my waist, pressing his tear-wet face into my back.
“You were right,” I whispered. “You were right, baby.”
