A woman stepped inside, and I recognized her immediately.
“Sally?” I said, confused. “What’s going on?”
Sally, Sam’s mother, looked apologetic. “I didn’t mean for it to seem like this. I just had to do something. When I picked Sam up yesterday, he couldn’t stop talking about the hike. He told me every detail.”
Leo stood still beside me.
Sally continued, looking directly at him.
“Sam said he offered to stay behind. But you didn’t let him. You told him, ‘As long as we are friends, I’ll never leave you behind.’”
My heart swelled again.
Sally’s eyes filled with tears. “And then you kept going.”
The room stayed quiet.
That’s when I realized… this wasn’t about punishment.
It was about something else entirely.
Something I hadn’t fully understood yet.
Sally’s words lingered in the air.
Then Carlson spoke again.
“We knew Mark, Sam’s father,” he said.
I looked at him, confused. “What?”
