Chapter 76 Kir
KIR
EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO
THE DALTON SCHOOL — STUDENT ABSENCE RECORD
COUNSELOR'S NOTE: Upon return, student presented as withdrawn, non-communicative. Previously strong academic performance declined sharply.
When asked about his mother, student said: "She's gone."
When asked about his father, student said nothing.
It’s dawn. I’ve been in this closet for hours.
My legs fell asleep a long time ago, but I don’t move them, because if I move them, Papa might hear, and if Papa hears, he might do to me what he just did to Mama.
I was supposed to be spending the night at Cayden’s house. But Cayden got food poisoning, so his mom dropped me off back home. I didn’t call to say I was coming back; I thought maybe I could sneak up and yell boo and Mama would laugh and call me her little fox the way she always does.
But then I saw.
Through the window, I saw.
Papa was at the counter with his back to me, hunched over something. His shoulders kept shaking. I thought maybe he was crying, which was weird because Papa never cries; Papa is made of stone and ice. But then he turned sideways and I could see what he was doing.
He was crushing pills. White pills, lots of them, grinding them up with the back of a spoon. The powder went into a bowl of applesauce.
Mama’s applesauce.
Papa stirred and stirred and the white powder disappeared into the yellow mush and then he picked up the bowl and walked out of the kitchen.
Toward Mama’s room.
I ran down the hall and into the closet that used to be my hiding spot when I was little and Mama and Papa would chase me around the house, pretending to be monsters.
I’m not a little kid—I’m twelve now—so I don’t believe in monsters anymore. But this still seemed like a good place to stay out of sight.
I pulled the door shut behind me and clamped both hands over my mouth.
That was hours ago.
At first, I heard voices from down the hall. Papa and Mama. They argued. They’ve been doing a lot of that lately. Then they got quiet.
Soon, I heard footsteps. When I pressed my eye to the crack between the closet doors, I saw Papa walking past.
Mama was in his arms.
She was wearing her red dress and her head hung back over the crook of Papa’s elbow. Her eyes were closed, but her mouth was open a little bit, like she was about to say something but forgot what it was.
She wasn’t moving.
She wasn’t moving at all.
I bit down on my hand so hard I tasted blood. The scream stayed trapped in my chest like a bird beating itself against a window. Mama. Mama. Mama!
Papa carried her down the hall. I heard the front door open and close. Then nothing. Just the house settling around me, creaking and groaning like it was sad, too.
I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat in the darkness and shivered.
That feeling didn’t change as the hours passed. Night went by, but I still felt all wrong inside, like I had worms in my stomach.
Papa killed Mama.
That doesn’t make sense, though. Papa loves Mama. He’s always loved Mama. When she got sick, he flew doctors in from everywhere. He held her hand during treatments. He yelled at nurses who weren’t gentle enough.
But I saw the pills. I saw him crush them up. I saw him put them in her applesauce. I saw him carry her out like she was already gone.
I start to feel confused.
Maybe I got it wrong. If Mama was just sleeping, or if Papa took her to the hospital because she got worse and he didn’t have time to call an ambulance, then maybe that’s all this was. Maybe the applesauce was just medicine. Special medicine that had to be crushed up.
Yeah. That’s it. That has to be it.
I’m being stupid. Papa would never hurt Mama. He loves her. He’s always loved her.
The front door opens, and I press my eye back to the crack. After a few heavy footsteps, Papa appears.
He’s alone.
His white shirt is muddy-brown now. His hands are nasty, caked with dirt under the fingernails. There’s a rip in his sleeve and his knuckles are bleeding.
He walks past my hiding place without looking.
And as he goes, I see that his shirt is soaked in blood, blood as red as Mama’s dress.
Mama isn’t with him.
Mama isn’t coming back.
I kick the closet door open. I want to sound angry, and big, like Papa does when he yells, but my voice is too squeaky and scared.
“What did you do to Mama?”
Papa freezes in the hallway. His back is to me, and he doesn’t turn around. The blood on his shirt looks almost black in the dim light.
“Kirill,” he says. “You’re supposed to be at Cayden’s.”
“What did you do to Mama?” I ask again.
He turns and I see his face for the first time. His eyes are watery and bleary. There’s dirt smeared across his cheek and his hair is matted with sweat.
He doesn’t look like Papa anymore. He looks like a stranger.
“You need to go back to bed, son,” he says. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
“No!” I take a wary step toward him, then another. “I saw you. I saw what you did! You put pills in her applesauce. You—you carried her out and she wasn’t moving and now, you’re covered in—”
“Kirill.” Papa holds up his hands. “Listen to me. Your mother was very sick. She was in pain. What happened tonight—”
“You killed her!”
I realize I’m crying now. Hot tears streak down my cheeks and I can’t stop them any more than I can bring Mama back to life.
“You crushed up those pills and you put them in her food and you—you—”
Papa takes a step toward me. I stumble backward.
“Don’t touch me!” I scream. “Don’t you ever touch me!”
Papa’s jaw sets. His eyes go flat and cold—the same stone and ice I’ve known my whole life.
“You don’t understand,” he says. “Someday, you will.”
“I understand plenty.” I’m shaking so hard my teeth chatter. “I understand that Mama is gone and you’re the one who made her go.”
He doesn’t deny it. That’s the worst part. He just stands there, bloody and broken, and he doesn’t deny a single word.
I straighten my spine the way he taught me. I wipe my face with the back of my hand. And I look my father dead in the eyes.
“I’ll never forget what I saw tonight,” I tell him. My voice doesn’t sound so squeaky and scared anymore. “I’ll never forgive you. And one day, I’m going to make you pay for what you did to her, even if it takes the rest of my life.”
Papa looks so badly like there’s something he wants to say.
But he doesn’t.
He just turns and walks away, leaving muddy footprints on the hardwood floor.