The streamers from Leo’s birthday party were still fluttering on the porch railing. Yesterday, they had looked festive—bright strips of red and blue dancing in the wind. Today, under the grey, iron-heavy sky, they looked like tattered ghosts. Like remnants of a civilization that had already moved on.
I stood in the center of the nursery, holding a cardboard box. The room was stripped bare. The crib was dismantled, the colorful rug rolled up, and the shelves emptied.
"Just the essentials," Caleb had said at dawn. "We travel light. We travel fast."
I looked at the pile of toys in the corner. I couldn't take them all. I picked up the stuffed wolf—the one Leo slept with every night—and placed it gently in the box next to a stack of diapers and a box of medical gauze.
Toys and banda
