I stared at the tiny pixellated screen of my cell phone as I hung up, my mind racing. I had to get home, to see him one last time. It wasn’t right. I’d spoken to him just that morning, he’d asked how the first day of school was, if I liked my professors this year. Now I had a 40 mile drive down the freeway at rush hour on a weeknight.

It hadn’t sunk in, not yet. I was crying because I was angry I was stuck so far away. There was a nauseating numbness in the pit of my stomach the whole time I drove, my knuckles white on the wheel as I inched along desperately toward home.

It sank in when I stepped through the front door, Mom waiting for me with her friend and a police officer.

“He remembered to pick up my glasses this morning,” Mom told me in a watery voice as we clung to each other. I nodded dumbly, unable to manage any words through the jagged sobs, and she led me toward the living room, past the officer and his bland expression as he glanced at me and wrote something else down on his clipboard.