When I reached my son’s room again, I hesitated at the doorway for a moment before stepping inside. He was asleep, completely unaware of the blackout, his breathing steady and unbothered by the chaos the house had fallen into. For a second, I almost felt guilty waking him—but curiosity had already taken over.
I gently shook his shoulder.
He stirred slowly, blinking into the darkness, disoriented.
“I need you to tell me what this is,” I said softly, raising the object into the dim light of my phone.
He squinted at it for a moment.
And then his face changed—not to fear, not to confusion, but to immediate recognition.
“Oh,” he said, as if I had just shown him something completely ordinary. “That’s from my toy set. It’s part of a robot thing I was building.”
A pause.
“It must’ve fallen under the bed.”
Just like that, the tension dissolved.
