I was eleven. Mom brought me to the Into the Woods movie after Grandma’s wake. Grandma was leaving the mall after buying some last-minute Christmas presents when another woman T-boned her car. She died waiting for the ambulance. The driver hadn’t been paying attention. At Grandma’s wake, my stomach turned at the stench of all the flowers—like the death bouquets draped over the Playbills above Ricky’s bed. In her coffin, Grandma didn’t look like herself. Skinnier, maybe? Just…different. I grabbed her hand to make sure it was her, to prove that a terrible mistake had been made and she was actually still alive somewhere. She was so cold—just as Drew’s body is already freezing to the touch. Dad yanked me back from the coffin. He hurt my arm. In the corner, Mom gasped and cussed him out in the funeral parlor. She could smell “it” on him. We went to the movie because she hoped it would heal the pain still slicing through my arm. The songs in Into the Woods were beautiful and made me cry. Mom cried too. Later that night, Dad never said goodbye; he went right back home to England. Mom put me to bed, singing and crying the Witch’s song. The song where she pleads to her daughter to stay and, once her pleas don’t work, turns to threats.

I sing the tune under my breath to Drew’s body. Temporarily, I had left the island. I was in a place much more familiar, but no less chaotic: home. A few months after Grandma’s funeral, Mom moved us to Ambrose and into the Reverend’s flock. She and Dad were already separated, but after this, he never visited us again. She protected me, but in doing so, led herself directly into the Reverend’s mind cult. She was prime for the picking—naïve, fleeing a bad man, unable to handle losing her mother and her marriage all at once, and desperate for normalcy for her son. Yet with each passing year, she became more devout, more rigid and disagreeable…and ultimately, drifted further and further away from me.

But she did it to protect me. She loved me. She loves me. She’d protect me again if she knew what was really happening.

I press Ario’s recorder against my chest as a searing pain cuts through it. I’m too young to have a heart attack. My eyes blur, double-visioning the Playbill and Drew’s body. It’s panic. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, Major. After a few controlled breaths, my lungs and throat reopen, and my vision snaps back into focus. I don’t have time to dive into the great mystery of my mother. I drop these thorny memories into the Little Bottle In My Heart. I’ll deal with it—and her—when I get home.