“Daddy… Mommy’s boyfriend hit me with a baseball bat. He said if I cry, it’ll hurt more…”

As if something were keeping him in that exact place, at that point where everything could change depending on a single decision.

“Don’t come any closer,” Kyle said, and now his voice had a different edge. “I’m warning you.”

An object hit something, maybe the countertop, maybe the floor.

My breathing became irregular, and for a second I forgot where I was, where I was going.

There was only that one scene that I couldn’t see.

—Marcus— I whispered. Please.

He did not respond immediately.

Instead, he spoke with a calmness that chilled me to the bone.

“The boy is afraid of you,” he said. “That should tell you something.”

Silence.

A thick, uncomfortable silence, full of unspoken things.

“He just fell,” Kyle replied, more quietly. “It was nothing.”

That phrase.

The same one Lena had used days before, when Ethan had a small bruise on his leg.

“He fell.”

The words began to align in my mind, like pieces that could no longer be ignored.

“No,” Marcus said. “That’s not what he said.”

My heart stopped for a second.

Because that was the truth.

And the truth, right now, seemed more dangerous than anything else.

“Kids exaggerate,” Kyle replied, with a short, forced laugh. “You know how they are.”

Marcus didn’t laugh.

He said nothing for a few seconds that felt endless.

Then he spoke, more slowly.

—Yes —he said—. But fear isn’t so easily invented.

The sound of footsteps.

Something shifted between them.

Ethan sobbed again, louder this time, as if the tension had become too much to contain.

—Dad… —she whispered—.

“I’m here,” I replied, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me directly.

But I needed to say it.

I needed to believe it.

—Marcus—I said—. The police should be arriving by now.

Another pause.

—Not yet—he replied—.

I looked in the rearview mirror.

No siren.
No lights.

Only the traffic, slow, indifferent, as if the world didn’t know that something was breaking down at that moment.

—Then go —I said—. Take it with you.

The words came out quickly, desperately.

But as soon as I said them, something inside me hesitated.

Because leaving meant leaving Kyle there.

And leaving meant… not knowing what would come next.

Marcus inhaled deeply.