Before I can apologize, my mom speaks.

“I had to, baby girl,” my mother cries, tears streaming down her face, dragging the remains of mascara with it. With a sniff and a harsh wipe across her face, my mother’s dark brown gaze stares down at my father’s body. He lies on his stomach, blood soaking through his shirt and creating a halo of darkness around his face. It bleeds into his cheek, staining his skin.

There’s no movement of his chest. No breathing, no blinking, no signs of life at all and vomit rises up my throat as my trembling fingers cover my mouth.

My entire body shakes, glancing between my dead father and my mother who just admitted she murdered him.

“I had to, Delilah …” she whispers. “I had to.”

“No,” I say, denying it, shaking my head and crawling backward until my back hits the cabinets.

“You don’t understand. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Mom, no,” I whisper. The realization grips my shoulders the way I wish I could grip my mother and shake her. Shake her and demand she tell me the truth because this can’t be real. She didn’t do it.

With her bottom lip quivering and my mother’s expression worn and full of pain, she looks me in the eye and tells me, “I’m sorry I didn’t do it sooner.”

Evidence convicts. Confessions can lead to convictions too, but as I drive exactly fifty-five miles per hour with my mother laying down in the back seat of my car, careful not to go over the speed limit, I refuse to let her confess to anything to anyone.

It doesn’t make any sense. Not what my mother did and not what I did. I dragged her out of there as she pushed against me, fought me even. I pulled her away and I’ll be damned if I’m going back there.

She’s not going down for murder.

I won’t let it happen.

“Lilah, baby,” my mother pleads with me between the sobs.

“Shhh, Mom,” I whisper and lick my bottom lip, tasting my own salty tears. “I just need time to think. I’ll fix this. I promise,” I tell her. I can’t believe she did it. She didn’t. My mind’s at war with itself.

There’s something missing, something wrong and I can’t let anyone know until I know what really happened.

The convenience store sign is lit, but half of it is out when I pull into the Gas & Stop. I’ve been to this place countless times. It’s stood here since I was a little girl. Around the corner there’s a pay phone. I’ve waited for years for it to vanish like the rest of them have, but somehow it’s remained.

I stop here every time I visit. And I’ve always thought the pay phone was only there for criminals and cheaters. As I park and release a breath I didn’t know I was holding, telling my mother to just stay in the car for a moment, I realize this time I’m the criminal.