The Silence of Abandonment

After Tanker got killed, everything changed at Freddy's. The house had the frozen, echoey quiet of abandonment. Ivan finally came back from wherever he disappeared to though he spent most of his time away on some new enterprise. His mother kept to herself in the back bedroom. She would offer us a sandwich and ask us questions about our day. But I wished she wouldn't. It appalled me. Her attempts to overcome it so plainly, pathetically failed. And in failing opened up an world I had only begun to suspect. Where wounds did not heal and things did not work out for the best.