My son sobbed the entire drive to his grandmother’s house. “Daddy, please don’t leave me here.” My wife snapped, “You’re babying him.” I left him anyway. Three hours later, a neighbor called. “Your little boy ran to my house shaking. He’s hiding under my bed and won’t stop crying.”

The drive became a series of blurs and red lights he barely registered. His thoughts came in flashes, fragmented and savage. Blood. Under a bed. Don’t let them find me. He imagined knives, broken bones, head wounds, car accidents, punishment gone too far. He imagined Owen’s small body collapsed in some sterile emergency room while adults explained around him and called it a misunderstanding. He imagined Sue with her hard hands and Marsha with her cold face and every warning sign he had minimized lining up now in perfect, obscene order.

By the time he turned onto Genevieve Fuller’s street, his hands were shaking so badly he almost missed the curb. Blue lights pulsed against the houses. Two police cruisers stood at angles in the driveway. An ambulance had just arrived, its back doors swinging open. William left his car crooked at the curb and ran toward the front porch.

An officer stepped into his path. “Sir—”

“That’s my son!”

Something in William’s face must have convinced him because the officer’s tone shifted immediately. “Mr. Edwards?”

“Yes.”

“Come with me.”