Eli met his father on a Tuesday.
He did not know that was what happened. Damon did not know either. I was the only one standing in that moment, with the full weight of what it was, and I had approximately four seconds of warning before it became something I could no longer stop.
It started with the tree.
Eli had been climbing the boundary tree at the edge of our yard every morning since we arrived. It had become the kind of ritual that children build without discussion, fixed and necessary, part of how he organized his day. Up before breakfast. Boots on before I could suggest otherwise. Out to the tree and up it in the particular efficient way he had developed over weeks of practice, finding the same holds in the same order, settling into the high branch with an apple if he had remember
