He doesn’t.

“Mom,” Eli says after a few seconds pass in silence.

I find my voice. “He was wrong. It isn’t hard at all.”

I stagger, then. Eli helps me to the kitchen table. He tosses some hand towels onto the spreading mess on the floor. He gives me a glass of water I can’t manage to sip without choking on it. He sits across from me and takes my hand. He rubs my back as I cough and spit.

“He was never going to leave us alone. He was going to hold us hostage to get what he wanted. He was going to tell people about … you. About what you did.” I gulp in air but still feel as though I can’t breathe.

“Mom …”

“I promised you, Eli!” I say this fiercely. My voice is stronger than I feel, but I want him to know I mean it.

A sob bursts out of him. “I’m sorry, Mom! I’m sorry!”

“You don’t have to be sorry, honey.” I squeeze the hand I was already holding. “I promised you I would never let anyone find out what happened to Billy. I meant it.”

Eli shudders. His eyes close. He rocks in his chair, pulling his hand from mine. “I told Christian what you told me, but … that’s not what really happened. It’s what you told me happened, and I was just a little kid, I didn’t remember, so I believed you when you said I did it. I could have done it. I could never remember anything about it, so I might have done it, right?”

Desperately, he shoves back from the table and stands, but if he wants to pace, Christian’s body prevents him. He stares down at the sprawled limbs, the spreading blood. Then at me.

“I told him what you told me, when we were talking about what scares us. But when they took Dad away, I thought … I think …”

“Just talk to me, Eli. Please.” If getting on my knees to beg him would work, I would do it.

Instead, I watch my son, my bright and shining star, crumple in front of me. Gasping, he chokes, fighting for breath and to find the words he needs to speak. I grab him. Hold him. He doesn’t fight me. Eli buries his face against the side of my neck.

“Mom, Mom,” he moans. “Oh …”

And then, at last, here it is, the thing we have kept a secret for all these years. The poison that’s infected us both. Truth bubbles up and out of him, lava from a pit. It burns us both right to the bone.

“Wait,” I tell him. “Slow down. I don’t understand.”

I hold my son’s face in my hands and hope my touch gives him strength. He shakes. I expect tears, but his eyes are wide, staring, dry. Small cracks in his lips bleed from where he has chewed them.

“Dad made me do it,” Eli says the same words I didn’t understand the first time. “Dad made me hurt Billy.”