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.”

“That’s my son!”

Something in William’s face must have convinced him because the officer’s tone shifted immediately. “Mr. Edwards?”

“Yes.”

“Come with me.”

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.”

“No one’s going to find you. The police are here. Paramedics are here. You’re safe.”

“No,” Owen said again, and his whole body shook harder. “They’re mad. They said don’t tell. They said—” He choked on the next words. “I was bad.”

William’s eyes filled so quickly he had to blink hard just to see. “Listen to me. You are not bad. You hear me? Whatever happened, it is not your fault.”

“But Mommy said—”

“I don’t care what Mommy said.” The fierceness in his own voice startled him. “I care what I’m saying now. You come to me, and I will protect you. I swear to God, Owen, I will protect you.”

There was a silence so deep William could hear his own pulse.

Then, inch by inch, Owen crawled toward him.

When the child finally emerged into the light, William nearly collapsed. There was blood everywhere—on his hairline, his cheeks, his neck, smeared down both arms, caked under his fingernails. But the paramedic nearest them, a woman in her forties with calm eyes and quick hands, took one look and said quietly, “I don’t think the blood is his.”

“What?” William whispered.