Inside the bag were knitting needles, lavender and white yarn, a paper pattern, and a crooked, unfinished handmade toy unicorn.

Sarah wiped her nose on her sleeve and whispered that Randy was secretly making it for me because he remembered I liked unicorns.

My heart completely shattered as I pulled out his hand-written card that read, “Mom, it’s not done yet, don’t laugh, I love you more than cereal breakfast.”

But beneath the yarn, my fingers brushed against a crumpled sheet of paper folded small, like Randy had tried to hide it.

It was a forced apology letter where my poor boy wrote that he was sorry for ruining the school’s Mother’s Day wall display.

Sarah looked down at her sneakers and confessed that Ms. Bell had made him write that heartbreaking note right before he fell.

She explained that another boy named Tyler had actually ruined the wall, but the teacher blamed Randy and told him that good kids still disappoint their mothers.

But just as my fingers tightened around the unjust apology note, Sarah pressed her little fist to her chest and whispered the chilling words my son said to her just seconds before his chair scraped and the room descended into total panic…