Now Patrick’s up, wide-eyed and pallid, a picture of some silver-screen hero fresh with fright on discovering the monster in the closet. I hear his footsteps quick behind me matching the thrum of blood pulsing through my veins, hear him yell, “Run, Jean! Run!” but I don’t turn around. Doors open as I fly past them, first Steve’s, then the twins’. Someone—maybe Patrick, maybe me—slaps on the hall light switch, and three blurred faces, pale as ghosts, appear in my peripheral vision. Of course, Sonia’s room would be the farthest from my own.

Mommy, please don’t let it get me don’t let it get me don’t—

Sam and Leo start crying. For the smallest of moments, I register a single thought: lousy mother. My boys are in distress, and I’m moving past them, uncaring and oblivious. I’ll worry about this damage later, if I’m in the condition to worry about anything.

Two steps into Sonia’s small room, I vault onto her bed, one hand searching for her mouth, clamping onto it. My free hand gropes under her sheets for the hard metal of the wrist counter.

Sonia moans through my palm, and I catch her nightstand clock out of the corner of my eye. Eleven thirty.

I have no words remaining, not for the next half hour.

“Patrick—,” I mouth when he switches the overhead light on. Four pairs of eyes stare at the scene on Sonia’s bed. It must look like violence, a grotesque sculpture—my writhing child, her nightgown translucent with sweat; me, lying sprawled on top of her, suffocating her cries and pinning her to the mattress. What a horrible tableau we must make. Infanticide in the flesh.

My counter glows 100 over Sonia’s mouth. I turn to Patrick, pleading mutely, knowing that if I speak, if the LED turns over to 101, she’ll share the inevitable shock.

Patrick joins me on the bed, pries my hand from Sonia, replaces it with his own. “Shh, baby girl. Shh. Daddy’s here. Daddy won’t let anything happen to you.”

Sam and Leo and Steve come into the room. They jostle for position and all of a sudden there’s no more room for me. Lousy mother becomes useless mother, two words ping-ponging in my head. Thanks, Patrick. Thanks, boys.

I don’t hate them. I tell myself I don’t hate them.

But sometimes I do.

I hate that the males in my family tell Sonia how pretty she is. I hate that they’re the ones who soothe her when she falls off her push-bike, that they make up stories to tell her about princesses and mermaids. I hate having to watch and listen.

It’s a trial reminding myself they’re not the ones who did this to me.

Fuck it.