I told them that if I helped them, they could never talk about it. Ever. I warned them that it would be a lonely secret and a haunting one. Kayla said the truth would haunt her whether she kept it a secret or not, but that at least she could live with the truth. Another round of lies and accusations might kill her. The atrophied part of my heart began to twitch, and I could feel myself at twenty, living inside of an obsession with all the things I wanted to take back—the stupid concert, the stupid car, the stupid decisions that wrecked my life and ended yours. How many nights have I tried to dream a different route: exiting for food, leaving an hour earlier or later, taking a backroad, taking a bus? Me driving. Me dead. How many times have I woken up certain heartbreak had killed me already?

My twenty-year-old self flickered: a body on a journey, my parents urging me to fill my life with my life, my father telling me to never settle, my mother asking, But are you happy? Their lives crackled in my atoms, and I could feel how hard they worked to give me choices, and how I chose until the choosing frightened me by shedding light on me, and how bright I was then, but how late it is now, and how the rules weren’t written for me, anyway.

Kayla was right: reality is painful enough.

I asked if she needed a ride. I don’t think she understood the implications of my question when she answered, No, so I asked how far away she lived, and she said, Six miles. She said her parents would be at church. They let her sleep in on Sundays. They wouldn’t notice she’d been gone. I told Kayla to leave through the back door, to circle the block if necessary, but to avoid our side yard, no matter what. I made her promise to never tell anyone she’d been to our house. Jonah’s ass was on the line, I reminded her. Mine, too. She promised, thanked me and was gone.

Then it was just me and Jonah.

He slid from the bed onto the ground, struggling to steady himself on all fours. I rubbed his back and shushed him, knowing time wouldn’t pause to comfort us—time couldn’t support the weight of my adult stepson dry heaving on the floor, mucus swinging from his face like a blown-glass pendulum—and that police aren’t big on excuses.

Jonah was begging, Please help, Elizabeth, please. I’d been the source of so much pain in this boy’s formative years, and now he was in my arms, moaning, Please. He wailed, They’ll put me on trial for murder. I accepted his fear as fact.