Karly wiped her eyes and waited. I knew what she was waiting for. She’d done her part to help me pry open a locked door. To give me a safe space. If she could share her pain, her fears of who she was, then I could share mine.

In the long silence that followed, I gathered my strength. I said, barely louder than a whisper, “My mother was packing a bag.”

Karly didn’t need an explanation, didn’t need me to tell her what this was about. She reached out and took my hand, and her eyes held on to me with the fiercest, deepest of stares. My breathing got ragged; my heartbeat got faster. I could still see it all in my head, because it was always there. My father, drunk out of his mind, his face beet red, wearing an old leather biker jacket he’d had for years. Me, watching the two of them, my knees up to my chest as I sat in the corner. I could see it. I just needed to drag out the words so Karly could see it, too.

“My mother was packing a bag,” I said again. “She was in a hurry. She was getting us out of there, and she wanted to be gone. We were going to live with one of her friends on the force for a while. That’s what she told me. A cop friend, a man. I had no idea she was having an affair with him. My father knew, though. He knew.”

I remembered the things my father had said about her, the names he’d screamed in her face, but I couldn’t repeat them. Not to anyone. They were too vile.

“Her gun was on top of the dresser,” I went on. “I don’t know why she left it there. I guess she was rushing, and she didn’t think. My father was shouting at her, and she just kept putting clothes in the suitcase as he got madder and madder. Until he grabbed the gun. I saw him do it, like it was slow motion, you know? He hesitated with the gun in his hand, but not for long, maybe a few seconds. Then he cocked it and fired. The blood flew, all over their bed and the wall. Mom collapsed, dead, just like that. My father looked at her body in a kind of shock, like even he couldn’t believe what he’d done. And then he looked at me.”

I felt Karly squeezing my hand, as if I were dangling from a bridge and she was the only thing to keep me from falling.