The father simultaneously pressed on the gas pedal and the preset car-radio channel 70s on 7, turning the volume up just enough to fill the unfamiliar silence. He glanced at the rearview mirror to see the little boy strapped in the backseat booster slouched, eyes closed. They would be home in seven minutes. 

Seven minutes from home, the little boy sat slouched in the backseat booster with his eyes closed, but that was the only part of him that embodied sleep. He quickly opened an eye to orient himself in the only town he had ever known, and then closed it again. As his father drove for seven minutes, the boy, eyes closed, knew each street they turned onto, knew they were home before the car even began to slow. When it did stop, the car holding the two of them was enveloped in indigo, the type of blue where crescent and gibbous and full moons swim the sky. Many moons ago, the car had held three. 

“We’re home,” the father said to the boy.

The boy pretended not to hear, chose to remain motionless, to play the character of sleep. Instead, he was waiting. Waiting for this to happen like it had so many times before. The little boy was waiting for his father to quietly exit the car, open the backseat door of the Volvo, unstrap the carseat, and gently hoist his boy out of the seat and onto his own familiar and comforting chest. The little boy was waiting to be carried up by his father to his bedroom like the baby he wanted to feel like again, to be tucked into bed, and as the lights turned off, to receive two sets of kisses on his forehead, one from his bristling beard – and another, hers.  

And although the little boy was waiting, he knew that what he was waiting for would never come again. And so he hoped. The little boy hoped that his father might get out of the car, unbuckle him from the booster, clutch him tight enough so that the little boy could smell the unfamiliar smoke-stained breath of his father as he carried him to his room, drop him into bed, and perhaps even scratch his skin with his beard as he bent down to say ‘goodnight.’ Then, at least the little boy would feel something from his father. 

But instead, the father repeated to the little boy, “We’re home,” before walking inside the house and up to his room without even turning on the porch light, leaving the little boy to walk inside by himself completely surrounded by the indigo of this night. And many, many moons later, the little boy would truly understand that he was witnessing the one person left drive farther and farther away.