It is surprisingly easy to know that something is wrong when your kitchen drawer, which once seemed to hold more forks than your family could ever need, suddenly has only two or three left.
At first, I thought it was funny.
Then it became annoying.
And by the end of the second week, I was genuinely angry.
I had spent days looking for those forks. I checked every kitchen drawer, searched the dishwasher, looked underneath the cabinets, and even checked the trash. I asked myself the same question over and over: Where were all those stupid forks going?
I was a stay-at-home mom, so I noticed things around the house. Missing forks were not exactly a mystery that should have been difficult to solve.
But somehow, it was.
I had a five-year-old son named Alex, and I became convinced that he was responsible.
Whenever I asked him whether he had taken any forks, however, his reaction made me uncomfortable.
He never laughed.
He never gave me an innocent excuse.
He would simply look frightened, press his lips together, and shake his head.
“No, Mom.”
I asked him more than once.
The answer was always the same.
“No.”
My husband, Brandon, was gone most of the day because of his construction work. He usually came home late, exhausted from long hours and overtime. Most nights, he barely had enough energy to eat before putting Alex to bed and practically falling asleep himself.
