I don’t even know why I’m typing this out. Maybe because the house is so quiet tonight that I can hear the refrigerator humming, and every time I close my eyes, I see that specific look on Sam’s face.

Throwaway account for obvious reasons. I just need to get this out before my head explodes.

Sam turned five last week. We have this little ritual every night where we say a prayer I taught him when he was three. It’s short, just a few lines about being safe and having sweet dreams. Last Thursday, he tacked on a line I never taught him.

“And please make me too heavy for Curtis to carry.”

I froze. I was holding the edge of his quilt, and my fingers just went numb. I asked him where he heard that, or who told him to say it. He didn’t look at me. He just pulled the blanket up over his face and went completely still.

“You’re not supposed to know,” he said.

I sat on his bedroom floor for a long time. The house was silent. I started thinking about the last six months, and I started writing down every little thing I’d talked myself out of. I’m so ashamed of this part. I spent a year telling myself Curtis was the good one. That’s what everyone said. He coached Sam’s t-ball. He carried in the groceries. He was an usher at Grace Fellowship and all the old ladies patted his arm when he walked by.

When Sam started wetting the bed again after a full year of being dry, I told myself it was the new preschool. I blamed the teachers. I blamed the schedule. I blamed anything except the man who lived in my house.

When Sam stopped letting me leave at drop-off, clinging to my leg in the parking lot of Little Lambs until Miss Randa had to peel him off, I told myself it was just a phase. I called it separation anxiety. I read articles about it online to make myself feel better.

When he started lining his shoes up by the front door every night, toes to the wall, exactly straight, and started crying if one was even a millimeter crooked, I told myself he was just particular. Like me. I thought he was just an orderly kid.

I kept building the reason before I even knew there was a crime. I actually defended a man in my own head who wasn’t even in the room. I was protecting a ghost.

The prayer broke that. It shattered the mental wall I’d built. I asked Sam, gentle as I could, if Curtis carried him anywhere. He nodded into the pillow. I asked where. He said, “The basement. For the quiet game.”

My heart didn’t shatter because that sounds like a movie line, but my brain just stopped working for a second. I remember the ceiling fan clicking overhead. I remember the smell of the strawberry shampoo still in his wet hair.

“What is the quiet game, Sam?” I asked.

He looked at the wall. “You don’t get to play. Only big people and me.”

I didn’t scream. I didn’t go find Curtis, who was downstairs watching the game with a bowl of chips. I just stood up. I told Sam we were going to visit Aunt Renata’s for a couple of days, like a sleepover.

“Does that sound fun?” I asked.

He looked at me with those big, terrified eyes. “Is Curtis coming?”

“No,” I said.

He let out a breath so long and shaky it scared me more than anything he’d said. I packed a bag with the calm of a woman folding laundry. Pajamas. His favorite bee toothbrush. The one plastic dinosaur he couldn’t sleep without. I didn’t pack for myself. I didn’t pack for the future. I just packed for right then.

Curtis came to the bottom of the stairs when he heard me moving around. He was holding a beer. He asked where we were headed this late. I lied. I told him my sister needed help with a plumbing issue. He studied my face for a second too long, just long enough to make me sweat, and then he said, “Tell Renata I said hey.”

I got Sam buckled in. I backed out of the driveway of the house I’d let this man move into. Two streets over, I pulled into the Circle K lot, left the engine running, and put Sam’s tablet on so he wouldn’t hear me.

Then I took out my phone and pulled up the after-hours line for his pediatrician, Dr. Okafor. It was the one number I knew would still pick up. My thumb hovered over the call button while Sam hummed the dinosaur song in the back seat.