April listened to Charlie ask the question again. The child had been traumatized beyond reason, and still he was thinking about someone other than himself. What a gem. What an amazing kid.

“You have to help Dad.”

April heard the words and didn’t quite know how to process them. She was still shaking. She looked at the dead body—no, two dead bodies—lying in the room. Their home had become a morgue.

She heard a siren in the distance. In moments the place would be swarming with police and EMTs.

“You have to go, Mom. Dad needs you.”

April knew what she wanted to say. She wanted to explain that August didn’t need her. That he never had and never would. That there was no way she could help him anyway. He was unhelpable. She opened her mouth and struggled for the words to say. She found nothing.

Flashing lights and sirens flooded the room.

“Go.”

April stared at Charlie. He was a child. He couldn’t possibly understand that she simply couldn’t go.

“Go.”

It was Grandma Rose.

“We’ll be fine. Go.”

April went.

She dashed through the kitchen, careful not to touch anything, not to even look at the horribleness there. She opened the back door and ran. She didn’t even know where she was going at first.

She needed a car.

She ran through her own backyard and then through the backyard of the neighbor behind their house, out to the next street. She saw police cars and emergency vehicles streaming toward her house. Charlie and Grandma Rose would be well looked after.

She raced down the street, down one, two, three, four blocks to a small gas station. She stopped near the pay phone near the road and pretended to use it. A man driving a small black Honda pulled in. He got out and filled up, then went into the convenience store. Maybe he needed a coffee. Or a Snickers bar. April didn’t see that he took his keys with him.

She hung up the phone and strolled over to the car. No one was watching. She looked in the driver’s-side window and saw the keys lying on the seat. It was almost too easy. She opened the door, and the car alarm went off. She jumped into the car and started the engine. Who on earth would turn on their car alarm and then leave the keys in the car? It was entrapment! For a moment April felt a twinge of sympathy for the legions of car thieves who roamed the DC streets.

She gunned the car, watching in the rearview mirror as the owner came running out the door of the convenience mart. He was shaking his fists. And running. April pulled out of the parking lot, just about ramming the vehicle into a truck. It was almost a very short-lived chase.