They had invited us somewhere no one would see, and I had thanked them for the lovely weekend.

“What’s going on, sweetheart?” I whispered, kneeling in front of him.

His eyes were wide, and what was in them was not a child’s ordinary fear.

It was terror.

I want to be honest about the moment before that note reached my hands, because it is the part I have gone over most since.

I had spent the whole meal with a low hum of wrongness in my chest, the kind of thing a body knows before a mind will let it.

Blanca had set my mug down with a small flourish, angled so the handle met my hand.

Dario had asked twice whether I was going to drink it.

There were no cousins at the table, no neighbors, none of the audience Blanca liked to gather when she wanted a Sunday performed.

It was just the four of us, at the far end of a road with no streetlights, and some animal part of me had been counting the exits since I walked in the door.

I had told that part of me to be quiet.

I had a habit, by then, of telling it to be quiet.

That was the habit my son broke with a folded piece of paper.

Chapter 2 — What Kai Heard