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“Of course I do.” Simone says it automatically because it is what Lang needs to hear right now. “And I love you so much, and Daddy loves you. I know things have been a little strange lately. Poppy’s been sick and Daddy has the new job. We’re all adjusting to a lot of new stuff, but you don’t need to worry about anything.”

This is true. And it is also a promise to herself. Langston doesn’t need to worry. No matter what happens, she is going to make sure this little angel breathing his hot breath into her neck is taken care of.

“Okay,” he says, reassured just that quickly in the way only kids can be. Her entire body relaxes into him while he cajoles her into reading two entire chapters of Percy Jackson before she can get him to fall asleep.

Escaping to a world where it’s the Greek gods messing with our lives instead of our closest friends and family is another nice break, but as soon as she closes the book and takes a minute to drink in her peaceful, sleeping son and his dreamy eyelashes, she goes to find her phone and call her husband—again. He’s beat her to the punch. There are three missed calls from a couple minutes ago and a text saying Call me, followed by a string of exclamation points.

She tries. No answer. Simone opens up the tracker app on her phone. She barely ever uses it, but it’s set for Alex’s car, for Langston’s backpack, and for her own vehicle, a tip she learned for finding it in overcrowded parking garages and the Wisconsin Dells Waterpark lot. He’s at Poppy’s, like she suspected. Her new theory is that after all the scotch he’s been drinking, he wants her to come pick him up. But that doesn’t warrant three back-to-back calls and an all-caps text. Simone’s agitation turns to foreboding before she’s even dialed. She lets it ring four times before she hangs up and calls Nancy, their neighbor, a kind but feisty widow who loves watching Langston when she doesn’t have a hot date lined up. Thankfully, Nancy is more than happy to watch Law & Order reruns on their couch while Langston sleeps.

Simone races through the dark streets to Poppy’s neighborhood, grateful it’s a short drive, given the storm has kicked back up, pouring thick sheets of snowflakes from the sky. She parks behind Alex’s car in the circular drive and rushes inside. The house is eerily silent. She calls out from the foyer, and the sound of her voice bounces back at her against all the marble, but otherwise there’s no response. Making a quick circuit of the first floor, she finds no one and nothing amiss. Simone calls out again and is met with a quiet that is the exact opposite of calming. So much so that she takes the stairs in the grand spiral staircase two at a time and beelines for Poppy’s bedroom suite. She’s breathless by the time she arrives at the doorway, and then the sight she comes upon steals the last gasp of air from her lungs. She grips the doorframe just to stay upright.

Alex sits cross-legged on the floor, cradling his grandfather’s head. Blood pools around them, staining Alex’s clothes, streaming from the old man’s body. Far too much blood for Poppy to possibly be alive. There are towels everywhere. Kitchen rags, dish towels, guest towels. It’s like Alex gathered every available piece of absorbent fabric in the house to try to clean up, and nothing worked.

Simone is fumbling for her phone in her back pocket to dial 911 when Alex registers her in the doorway. “Don’t bother. It’s too late.”

“What happened, Alex? How long have you been like this?” She can’t tell where on the body all the blood has come from; there’s so much of it. Too much for a fall. Alex’s calls came at least thirty minutes ago, and who knows when this happened; Poppy is already an unnatural color, his thin skin nearly translucent.

A nature documentary she and Langston watched a few weeks back followed a chimpanzee mother who carried her dead baby around for days, cradling it, grooming it, trying in vain to feed it. Simone, tears in her eyes, wanted to change the channel, to spare her son the grief of… nature? Now she wants to spare herself the harrowing image of her blood-soaked husband cradling his grandfather for who knows how long…

“He’s gone, Simone. He’s gone.” Alex continues rocking back and forth, even more violently, either to soothe himself or to shake life back into his grandfather.

That’s when she sees it—the gun beside Alex’s thigh. She’s never seen one outside of movies and television and is surprised at the level of fear and dread the small piece of metal elicits in her. The violence and gore of the scene is preventing her from processing or even breathing. Before she can do anything else, Simone forces air into her lungs.

“He asked me… he wanted to die…” Alex’s words tumble out in broken fragments that Simone tries to piece together while eyeing the deadly weapon.

Simone reaches for the doorframe again and grips it so hard that she breaks a fingernail, and still it doesn’t help tether her to reality. This reality.

“You did this? You shot…”

“What, Simone, no! Jesus Christ! How could you even think—” Alex has abruptly stopped crying. The tears become confusion and then outrage in the time it takes for Simone to rush over to him. She drops down behind him and squeezes his shoulders, consolation and an apology at once.

“He did this! He told me he wanted to die. We went to see Father Mike today. They had a talk. I knew he wanted… I just didn’t think he’d actually…”

“Where did the gun come from?”

“It’s Poppy’s. He’s had it since I was a kid. I should have hid it from him… I just didn’t think… I didn’t…”

As subtly as she can, she leans in to smell Alex’s breath and skin. She needs to know if he’s been drinking. But he seems dead sober. Next, she takes in Poppy, his body, that is; Poppy, the man, is gone… a living, breathing person reduced to an empty shell of skin and bones, just like that. He’s wearing a three-piece suit. His shoes are perfectly shined and what remains of his hair is slicked back with a pomade that smells like bay leaves. He’s dressed like a man prepared for his final moments.

“He wanted me to help him. Begged me.” Alex’s eyes remained fixed on his grandfather’s still, pale face. “But I couldn’t… I told him I couldn’t.”

The old man’s eyes are mercifully closed. Simone can’t bear to think about whether they’d been open when Alex found him, whether Alex had been the one to close them.

“This is my fault.” A fresh wave of sobs overtakes Alex, sending his body shuddering, which in turn makes Poppy’s limp, lifeless legs shake.

“Because you wouldn’t help him die? No, Alex, no. If he truly wanted to end his life, he would have found a way. He did find a way.”

“No… no… I asked him about what happened at Tate. If he had anything to do with that kid. Then a few hours later he… he…”

Alex doesn’t finish the sentence, and she’s not going to bother to push him on what exactly Poppy told him, at least not right now. Besides, she doesn’t really need to, Poppy’s lying here with a bullet hole in his brain, which to Simone’s eye says it all. Or at least enough. Simone stands instead and walks down the hall to the linen closet to get yet another towel. They’re all used up, so she looks for a sheet instead. For a split second the thought that Poppy would be upset if she soiled his fine linens makes her hesitate, then it registers that it doesn’t matter what Poppy wants anymore. This is what shock and grief do: force you to remember a terrible truth, over and over again, as seconds, minutes, or even years pass and your stubborn, protective mind simply refuses to acknowledge it.

Armed with a handful of sheets, pushing aside the nausea roiling through her, she lifts Poppy’s body from her husband’s lap, an act that takes very little physical strength—he’s shockingly light—but all the emotional fortitude she can muster.

“We have to call the police, Alex.”

“No, we can’t. He wouldn’t want people to know that he did it this way,” Alex says, or rather croaks out.

“I understand, but we need the authorities to come out and help us. We can’t leave Poppy here. You understand that, right? We can hold off on the police, but you need to call Chuck and the lawyers—they’ll be able to help, okay? Where’s your phone?”