I follow him out of the room and down the hall to the front of the house. “You can’t possibly be mad that I’m going out for mini-golf with Mason. It’s not a date.”

Aiden seems confused, then shakes his head. “I don’t care about that. You need to hear this.”

That gets my attention. He leads me up the stairs to his bedroom, where the twins are sitting together on his bed. Jason is hugging himself nervously and Jackson looks like he swallowed a bug.

“Tell her exactly what you told me,” he instructs them.

“Are we in trouble?” Jackson sniffles.

“Jackson wanted to tell you before but I convinced him not to say anything,” Jason jumps in.

Aiden’s face softens, but I can still see the anger simmering underneath. “You’re not in trouble. I promise. Just tell Amelia.”

Jason bites his lip and hesitates for a second before he says, “We lied before. I’m not getting bullied. I just said that because Jackson was going to blab.”

Jason looks for reassurance from Jackson, who nods.

“We know who killed Greg,” Jason says, then takes a deep breath. “We did.”

I’m so shocked all I can do is blink at them. They’re children. How can children kill a person, especially a grown man like Greg? But Aiden’s serious face tells me this isn’t a joke. My heart pounds.

“What? How? You guys weren’t even home.”

Jason fidgets in his seat but Aiden says, “It’s okay. Tell her what you told me.”

“We were at Tyler’s house, and we told him that Aiden got us the new Return of the Zombie Aliens video game. We wanted to play, so Jackson and I walked home to get it.”

Aiden’s jaw is clenched. He’s heard this story and doesn’t like it.

Jackson continues, “We know where Aiden keeps the key, so we just let ourselves in to get it.”

I try to paint a picture in my head, and remember that Aiden keeps the key under a brick in the walkway near the door.

“We got the game and locked the door, but when we turned around, a bloody, angry man came up to us.”

This can’t be real. Two nine-year-olds did not overpower and kill a grown man. Aiden’s staring straight ahead, but it’s clear his mind is running a mile a minute. It looks like he’s trying to take steadying breaths.

“What happened next?” I ask them, even though I feel like I’m holding my breath.

“We recognized him as Greg . . .”

Jackson picks up when Jason trails off. “We knew he used to hurt Aiden, and we were always scared of him.”

Aiden’s hand clenches and body stiffens. He thought he’d protected the twins from the truth. He thought they didn’t know Greg abused him.

“He—he wasn’t normal,” Jason continues. “His eyes looked weird. And he was saying stuff about us belonging to him. Then he grabbed me. He was trying to pull me away from the house.” Jason’s crying now, and my heart breaks.