That night, I asked Ryan to sit down.
“I don’t want your mom alone with the kids anymore,” I said quietly.
Ryan blinked. “You think she’d hurt them?”
I shook my head. “No. But Max is reacting to something. He’s never done this with anyone else. Ever. And today… the kids were crying in the basement with the lights off. That’s not a game. That’s not normal.”
Ryan was quiet for a long time. “There’s… something I haven’t told you,” he finally said.
And that’s when the story changed.
He told me that when he was young, his mom had been a perfectionist to a fault. She didn’t hit, she didn’t scream—but she’d punish in ways that were… strange. Cold. Silent treatments that lasted for days. Locking him in his room for “reflection.” One time, when he spilled orange juice on the carpet, she made him sit outside in the cold for hours to “learn responsibility.”
“She never saw it as abuse,” Ryan said softly. “She called it parenting. But it stuck with me. And maybe… maybe Max senses something I’ve tried to bury.”
I felt my breath leave me.
