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I bit down on my hand so hard I tasted blood. The scream stayed trapped in my chest like a bird beating itself against a window.Mama. Mama. Mama!

Papa carried her down the hall. I heard the front door open and close. Then nothing. Just the house settling around me, creaking and groaning like it was sad, too.

I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat in the darkness and shivered.

That feeling didn’t change as the hours passed. Night went by, but I still felt all wrong inside, like I had worms in my stomach.

Papa killed Mama.

That doesn’t make sense, though. PapalovesMama. He’salwaysloved Mama. When she got sick, he flew doctors in from everywhere. He held her hand during treatments. He yelled at nurses who weren’t gentle enough.

But I saw the pills. I saw him crush them up. I saw him put them in her applesauce. I saw him carry her out like she was already gone.

I start to feel confused.

Maybe I got it wrong. If Mama was just sleeping, or if Papa took her to the hospital because she got worse and he didn’t have time to call an ambulance, then maybe that’s all this was. Maybe the applesauce was just medicine. Special medicine that had to be crushed up.

Yeah. That’s it. That has to be it.

I’m being stupid. Papa would never hurt Mama. Helovesher. He’salwaysloved her.

The front door opens, and I press my eye back to the crack. After a few heavy footsteps, Papa appears.

He’s alone.

His white shirt is muddy-brown now. His hands are nasty, caked with dirt under the fingernails. There’s a rip in his sleeve and his knuckles are bleeding.

He walks past my hiding place without looking.

And as he goes, I see that his shirt is soaked in blood, blood as red as Mama’s dress.

Mama isn’t with him.

Mama isn’t coming back.

I kick the closet door open. I want to sound angry, andbig,like Papa does when he yells, but my voice is too squeaky and scared.

“What did you do to Mama?”

Papa freezes in the hallway. His back is to me, and he doesn’t turn around. The blood on his shirt looks almost black in the dim light.

“Kirill,” he says. “You’re supposed to be at Cayden’s.”

“What did you do to Mama?” I ask again.

He turns and I see his face for the first time. His eyes are watery and bleary. There’s dirt smeared across his cheek and his hair is matted with sweat.

He doesn’t look like Papa anymore. He looks like astranger.

“You need to go back to bed, son,” he says. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

“No!” I take a wary step toward him, then another. “I saw you. I saw what you did! You put pills in her applesauce. You—you carried her out and she wasn’t moving and now, you’re covered in?—”

“Kirill.” Papa holds up his hands. “Listen to me. Your mother was very sick. She was in pain. What happened tonight?—”

“You killed her!”

I realize I’m crying now. Hot tears streak down my cheeks and I can’t stop them any more than I can bring Mama back to life.