“I thought if she was weak, she’d work less, she’d stay home, and you’d need your mother again.
That’s all it was supposed to be.
And then Malachi — Malachi told me what to do.
He supplied it.
He told me everything.” She was unraveling in real time, the whole rotten shape of it coming out of her.
Even then, even holding my terrified child in the rain, some part of me heard what she was actually confessing, and it was almost pitiable in its smallness.