My son sobbed the entire drive to his grandmother’s house. “Daddy, please don’t leave me here.” My wife snapped, “You’re babying him.” I left him anyway. Three hours later, a neighbor called. “Your little boy ran to my house shaking. He’s hiding under my bed and won’t stop crying.”

Inside, the air smelled of flour and lavender and fear. Genevieve Fuller stood in the hallway wearing an apron dusted white, her gray curls escaping a loose clip. She looked like someone’s kindly aunt from a children’s book, except her face was stricken. “He asked for you,” she said.

William nodded, unable to speak.

The officer led him to a bedroom with the door half open. Two paramedics waited nearby, keeping back. William dropped to his knees at the threshold before anyone could tell him not to.

At first he saw nothing but bed skirt shadows.

Then, from the darkness beneath the bed, a pair of eyes.

“Owen,” William said, and the name came out broken. “Buddy. It’s me.”

A sound emerged from under the bed—half sob, half gasp.

“I’m here,” William whispered. “I’m here now.”

Slowly, as his eyes adjusted, he made out the outline of his son curled against the far wall, knees tucked under his chest, one shoe missing. The Spider-Man shirt Owen had worn that morning was soaked dark across the front. His face was streaked red. His hands looked dipped in rust.

William stopped breathing.

“Owen, can you come to me?”

“No.” The word was barely audible. “They’ll find me.”