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That’s how it ends.

I clamp a hand over my mouth to muffle a strangled yelp. Felicity freezes. Their eyes are so wide I can see the whites in the dark. They’re not breathing and I’m not, either. The heat vent finally shuts off with a quiet chunk from somewhere deep in the belly of the house.

“What was that?” Mom says on the other side of the door.

“Nothing!” Leah says. “It was nothing.”

Mom makes a quiet noise of disbelief. I can almost picture it: everyone out there realizing at once that Leah is playing guard dog.

“Is there someone in there?” Mom says.

“No,” Leah says.

“Hold on,” Alyssa says, “don’t—Leah, come here.”

“Step away from the door,” Mom says.

“No.”

Felicity and I look at each other. What the fuck are we supposed to do? There’s nowhere to go. There’s only one way into the powder room, and one way out. No windows to escape through and nowhere to hide.

“Leah,” Mom says, “have you seen Morgan recently? Did she talk to you?”

“Morgan’s not here,” Leah insists through gritted teeth.

She is doing her best. That said, her best is not enough.

I understand that more than anyone.

Mom pushes Leah into Alyssa’s arms—”Get your father, get away, now“—and rips open the powder room door. The door I did not lock, because I am scared of locked doors.

Alyssa screams for her father, and Mom is in the powder room, and she’s grabbing me. Mom is yelling, “I have her, I have her.” She’s slamming me against the wall. All her weight is on me. Pressing into my lungs and the soft skin of my neck. I claw and thrash and bite but she doesn’t let go. She doesn’t let go because Mom is finally going to be the hero: the woman who apprehended the suspect, who set aside her motherly love to take down her own daughter, the monster. “I have her!”

I don’t see Felicity lunge for my mother.

I don’t see Felicity grab her by the hair, the coat, try to pull her off me. I feel it more than anything. The weight of Felicity crashing into her back, then snatching at her, dragging her, fighting for every inch.

This is what I do see:

Mom pulling the switchblade from the pocket of her coat.

Mom jerking her hand up and behind her.

Metal flashing.

And Mom’s hand falling, empty.

Felicity staggers back, grasping helplessly at their face. The switchblade handle sticks out of the underside of their jaw. Their mouth is open, stuck that way, the blade glinting from between their teeth.

The knife went in through the soft part of the jaw, under the tongue, and—and—

It must have hit the top teeth. Or pierced the hard palate. Lodged in the upper mandible, the bone.

Alyssa is still screaming. Leah shouts, tears away from her sister, clamps her hands over her ears. Warren is yelling but I can’t make out the words. Felicity catches themself on the toilet tank, wheezing because their body must be too shocked to do anything else.

Mom lets go of me, turns to them, and I’ve spent enough time around a murderer to know when I’m about to watch it happen. I don’t know what Mom is thinking—that she was attacked, that she had to defend herself, that Felicity is my accomplice who needs to be stopped at all costs—but it doesn’t matter.

All I did was try to stop her.