The icing was bad now. As bad as ever, and Max had to tell his brain there was a world out there where he needed to be. It was like trying to wake yourself up from a bad dream, but you weren’t sure if you were even asleep. Maybe the terror was real. Maybe it would last forever.

This time, he came back, but with great effort. Maybe thirty seconds passed, but it felt like he’d been buried alive for days.

His mom had left the safety of their car and climbed inside with the man. She just sat there next to that man, chatting, like it wasn’t a problem at all.

But Max knew. He knew because that man had triggered the icing.

It’s not safe. The man isn’t safe.

He was a detective. His mom had called him that. Detective Something.

Max’s thoughts raced back to the night at the firepit. Back to roasting marshmallows with his cousin. To the moment Willow had told him about a cop investigating his mom over his dad’s death.

They think she did it, Willow had said. What do you think?

The memory scared him almost as much as seeing his mom in that car with the unsafe man. Max had worked hard to forget that night with Willow, worked so hard he’d come close to convincing himself it never happened. A dream. A mind-demon that sprouted up after all he’d been through. It couldn’t have happened, because the idea of what Willow had told him (mind-demon, that’s all it was!) was the worst thing he could think of. And he could think of plenty of awful things.

They’ll take her away for a long time, Willow had said. Then you wouldn’t have any parents left.

And now he was here. The unsafe man was here. Came all the way back in the snow to take his mom away. And look at her. Just getting into his car like it was okay. It wasn’t okay. She’d promised to never leave him, and she’d just jumped into the mouth of the monster. Just like that.

That made him so mad.

Mad to him felt like the sting of a burn, fingertips on a hot light bulb.

He’s going to take her away, Max thought. Right here. Just leave me in here with the car running, all the way until the gas runs out. Then I’ll die in Grandpa’s car. Frozen to death.

Max knew fury. He didn’t think others could see when it happened to him, but he sure felt it. It felt like this. This scramble in his brain. This need to smash and cut and burn and stomp.

The last time it was this bad was the night Dad died. But it had been bad enough a few times even before then. Enough to give Max ideas he knew he shouldn’t be having but couldn’t control even when he tried. And he tried so hard.

Pretty hard, anyway.

He’d read all his mom’s books. She didn’t know that, but it wasn’t hard to sneak them into his room. She said they were for grown-ups, but he’d read plenty of grown-up books. Plenty. And he’d wanted to read hers, because she was…well…Mom. Max wanted to see how she thought. How she used words. How she made stories.