Who could blame me for being a little down? Hey, the Rolling Stones had it right when they talked about Mother’s Little Helper. I wasn’t old, not yet, but it was still a drag, and I needed … something … sometimes.

Ken had been gone for a week, which meant he could be home at any moment. He might not expect me in an apron, but he would expect me to put on a smile. Our happy family needed to be happy, and didn’t I want that too? Of course I did. I wanted to feel good. Content with the choices I’d made. Satisfied, even.

When the doorbell rang, I expected a kid selling cookies or magazines or wrapping paper. I knew Billy Peak. He lived two streets over. I used to see him on the playground next to their house, when I took Eli there. Sometimes, his mother was there, looking even more tired than I usually felt. A lot of times, he was by himself while she stayed inside. Sleeping, the little boy had told me once, pronouncing it without the “l.”

“Mama is sweeping,” he’d said. “I’m not apposed to wake her up.”

So I’d given him a sandwich and some Goldfish crackers, and he and Eli had played together very nicely. Over time, he’d started following us home on occasion. The boys would play, I’d feed them an early dinner and drive the kid home … or walk him, if I was too stoned to get behind the wheel. I always meant to get his mother’s number, but I never managed it, and she clearly never got mine. Never even noticed her kid was at someone else’s house for hours.

Taking care of Billy always made me feel like I, at least, could not be the shittiest mother in town.

That day, the kid looked more unkempt than usual. Hair a little too long in places, too short in others, as though he’d taken the scissors to it himself. Mismatched clothes. To be fair, if Eli dressed himself, he’d also have worn something rumpled that didn’t go together … but he didn’t have to, because at six years old, he still got help from Mama.

Eli was happy to see Billy. I was happy to have a respite from entertaining, educating, being “on.” With the boys playing together in the basement, I didn’t have to smile. I didn’t even have to pay attention. They were safer there than left alone to wander the streets, right? I was the good mother, the one who set them up with games and toys and snacks.

I deserved a little break.

Didn’t I?

I don’t know what shook me awake. A sound, probably. A scream? I wasn’t sure. I found the boys in the basement, but not in the rec room, where they’d been told they could play.

They were in Ken’s office, which had once been my father’s workshop, where they’d been expressly forbidden to go.

Billy, on the floor. Eli, my precious boy, standing over him with the heavy nail gun dangling from his two small hands, so heavy, how could he even have lifted it?