Page 244 of What We Burn

“My poor boy,” she whispers, releasing his hair and touching the backs of her fingers to his hot cheek. She reaches into her pocket and⁠—

Jams a syringe into the side of his neck.

“What the fuck—” Sage lunges forward, but Micah catches her arm.

“It’s okay,” Gloria says. She pulls the needle out, caps it, and tucks it into her coat pocket like it’s a set of car keys. “It’s diazepam. Same thing they’d give him in an ER, except I don’t make him wait four hours in fluorescent lighting while some twenty-two-year-old resident Googles his symptoms.”

“You just stabbed your son in the neck,” Sage says, her voice climbing.

“I sedated my son because if I don’t, he’ll be awake for three more days and by the end of it, he won’t remember his own name.” Gloria doesn’t look up. She’s still stroking Milo’s hair, still rocking, still humming that low, private note. “This isn’t his first crash, sweetheart. It won’t be his last. I’ve been managing these since he was sixteen.”

Milo’s eyes are already going soft. The tension in his body is draining out of him in stages—first his hands, unclenching from Gloria’s coat. Then his shoulders, dropping away from his ears. Then his jaw, the muscles releasing, his mouth going slack. The diazepam is fast. That syringe was dosed by a woman who knows her son’s body weight and metabolic rate the way other mothers know shoe sizes and allergies.

“This has been happening since he was sixteen?” Micah asks quietly.

“Milo’s brain doesn’t have an off switch,” Gloria says. “It never has. When he was small, it was a gift—fastest kid in every class, built his first computer at eleven, could talk to anyone about anything and did great at sports.” Her voice is steady, but there’s a worn quality to it, like a path walked so many times the ground has packed smooth. “But the engine that runs that fast doesn’t idle well. When it crashes, it crashes hard. And when he’s done something that overwhelms the processor—” She taps her coat pocket. “This is the reset button.”

“How often?” I ask.

“Less now than when he was younger. He’s learned to manage. The humor, the chaos, the constant noise—that’s not just his personality. It’s his coping mechanism. He keeps the engine idling so it never has to stop.” She looks down at her son, whose breathing has slowed to the deep, even rhythm of pharmaceutical sleep. “But sometimes the revs get too high and the whole thing blows. Tonight was a blow.”

“Tonight was fourteen homicides,” I say, because someone needs to name it.

Gloria’s eyes find mine. Sharp. Clear. Not a trace of shock in them.

“You think I don’t know what my son does?” she says. “You think I don’t know what all of you do? I raised that boy. I taught him how to think. I taught him how to see patterns everyone else misses. And when he learned about the evil in this world—about the kind of men who walk free while others suffer—I taught him how to do what needs to be done and cover his tracks so he could keep doing something about it.” Her hand doesn’t stop moving through Milo’s hair. “I’m not going to sit here and pretend to be horrified that he killed that many men. My son doesn’t kill without reason. But I am horrified that it sounds like he had to do it alone.”

Sage’s face has gone through about six expressions in the last thirty seconds and has landed on something I can only describe as recognition—the look of a woman who has just met the source code and finally understands the program.

“He wasn’t alone,” Sage says. “Knox was with him.”

“Knox. Okay. That’s good.” Gloria shifts Milo’s head in her lap, adjusting the angle so his airway stays clear. The gesture is so practiced, so automatic, it makes my chest ache even more—why didn’t I think of that? “My son doesn’t do well when he’s alone. He needs you.” She lifts her head and looks at Sage, then Micah and me. “He needs all of you.”

I take a step back.

I think about the way Milo laughs when he codes. The way he needles me until I snap at him, then grins like that was what he wanted all along. The way he spirals when he’s shut out.

I think about his head rolling against my shoulder and the way he sagged on the mat and couldn’t get back up.

I made the call to stand down.

I’m the reason he felt like he had to do it alone.

Amy paid for it.

Milo did too.

“Will he be okay?” I ask, noting how strained my voice is.

“He’ll be better in the morning,” Gloria says, rocking gently. “He’ll sleep for about six hours. And when he wakes up, he’ll be groggy and disoriented and probably hungry. Make him eat before you let him do anything else. Protein, not sugar—his blood sugar crashes after these episodes and if he does too much before he’s eaten, he’ll spiral again.” She rattles this off like a care sheet. Like discharge instructions she’s memorized from years of repetition. “No screens for the first hour. Keep his agenda clear for a couple days. No heavy conversations. No alcohol. Let the system reset.”

“Gloria—” I start.

“And for God’s sake, don’t let him apologize.” Her voice cracks on that one. Just barely. Just enough to show the mother underneath the general. “He’s going to wake up and the first thing he’ll want to do is say sorry for being a burden, and if any of you let him say those words, I will come back to this house and I will be armed.”

“Understood,” Micah says.

Gloria stays another twenty minutes. Sitting on the mattress with Milo’s head in her lap, stroking his hair, occasionally checking his pulse with two fingers pressed to his wrist. Sage sits on the other side, her hand on his chest, feeling it rise and fall. Micah is in the doorway, leaning against the frame, present, quiet, available.