I was sitting at my desk finishing a report when my ex-husband\u2019s name flashed on my phone screen. Howard was at Jasper\u2019s house that week, so I answered immediately. \u201cHey, so.Don\u2019t freak out,\u201d Jasper said. My heart rate doubled before he finished the sentence. \u201cWhat happened?\u201d\u201cHoward broke his leg.He fell off his scooter. Freak accident. I was right there with him.I saw the whole thing.\u201dHoward is ten. He is energetic and brave and still my baby. I grabbed my purse, told my boss it was a family emergency, and drove to the hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Howard looked so small in that big hospital bed. A bright blue cast was already wrapped from his ankle to his knee, and his eyes were red-rimmed when I leaned down to kiss his forehead. \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he whispered.\u201cFor what? You didn\u2019t do it on purpose.\u201d\u201cFor falling.\u201d He wouldn\u2019t look me in the eye. Something in that small evasion snagged at me.I asked gently whether he had been doing tricks. Howard loves trying to jump the curb on his scooter, and I have told him a thousand times to wait until he is older. I was not even angry.I just wanted to know. \u201cI told you,\u201d Jasper interrupted. \u201cHe just lost his balance.No tricks. Just a weird slip on the driveway.\u201dHoward shifted uncomfortably in the bed. He looked at his dad, then at his cast, then at the floor.Something was off. I could feel it clearly, the way you feel a temperature change in a room, but I did not want to start a fight in front of my injured son. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was sitting at my desk finishing a report when my ex-husband\u2019s name flashed on my phone screen. Howard was at Jasper\u2019s house that week, so I… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":48224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":69,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48225,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48223\/revisions\/48225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}