He remembered that day vividly. His mother had gone grocery shopping and left him at home while his father was still at work. Normally, she would have taken her son with her, but Kurt had been up sick half the night, and so she had tucked in her little boy, petted down his hair and told him to go to sleep for a while, and that she would be back again before he had woken from his nap. He had only protested a little, and then she had left, her promise to buy him his favourite crackers the last thing he heard before the door closed behind her. That had been the last time he had seen his mother.

He had woken up when his father came home from work, groggy and still a little nauseous, and asked for his mummy and his father had looked at him and he had immediately known that something was wrong. His father did not look like himself. He looked like an old man, somehow, and like he had forgotten how to smile. He had explained to Kurt that his mummy was not coming home right now, but they were going to see her somewhere else instead, and then he had lifted him up and carried him to the car, even though Kurt was still in his pyjamas. His hands had shaken the whole time in the car, and he had looked even worse than Kurt had felt when he had been sick the night before.
When at last the car came to a halt, his father had sat for a moment without getting out, shaking worse than before. Then he had turned to Kurt and told him his mummy was in the hospital and they were going to visit her. Kurt had asked if she was in the hospital to have a baby like his friend Sally’s mum had been a couple of weeks before, and his father had very, very gently told him no. His mummy was in hospital because she had been in an accident and the doctors needed to help her get better. Kurt’s eyes had gone wide. He had asked what was wrong with her and his father had sighed and said: “I don’t know, kiddo. She’s hurt,” and then he had finally opened the door, lifted a shoeless, pyjama-clad Kurt onto his hip and entered the big, grey building.

He did not remember much from the hospital. Mostly, he remembered waiting. Waiting while his father talked to a woman in a pale green uniform at the front desk, then waiting with his father for a doctor to come talk to them, then waiting alone again while his father talked to the doctor, and finally being led down a corridor and being told to wait outside the door while his father and the doctor went inside. He had not been allowed inside and he did not know what they were saying, but when his father had come back out again, he was crying like Kurt had never seen him do before. It had taken some time before they were allowed to go home, his father having to talk to more doctors, some men in suits and two policemen with the gravest expressions Kurt had ever seen.

When they had finally been allowed to go home, his mother had not come with them and his father had been so silent, and Kurt had not been able to get a single word out, even though he wanted to ask where his mummy was and when she was coming home.
Back in the living room, his father had explained. His mummy would not come back. She had been hurt so much in the accident that the doctors had not been able to help her. Instead she had died, had fallen asleep the way his granddad Ben had, so she did not have to hurt anymore. And of course they were going to miss her, and she was going to miss them, and it would be hard without her, but just because she was not alive anymore, it did not mean that she had stopped loving them.
“She loved you so much, Kurt. Never forget.”

The funeral had been horrible. There had been so many people there, all dressed in black, all wearing sombre expressions, and quite a lot of them crying. The service had taken so long and Kurt never knew when to stand up or sit back down again, or when to sing, or what to sing, because he did not know any of the songs except the last one, which his mother had taught him, and he just wanted his mummy to come back. Wanted to be held in her arms while she rocked him gently as she used to do when she sang or told him a story. He did not want to sit there on a hard bench while the vicar talked and talked about his mother like he knew her and his father was silent beside him, clutching the hymnal so tightly his knuckles turned white.

He had watched as they carried his mother’s coffin out, clutching his grandmother’s hand and being patted on the hair by people he did not know. When the coffin had been lowered into the ground and a solemn man in dark clothes had started shovelling earth down the hole, he had been horrified. He had pulled on his father’s hand and told him to make them stop and not to bury his mummy in a hole in the ground, because how would she get out? How could she come home if they trapped her like this? His father had hushed him and told him it was alright, but in the end, Kurt had panicked and started crying, and his father had led him away. They had sat down on a bench in the now empty church and Kurt had cried himself to sleep on his father’s lap.

The days after the funeral had been filled with a confused ache from wondering when his mother was going to come home. They had been living off takeout and instant noodles until his grandmother came by and started fussing about the state of the house. She had moved into the spare bedroom that same day and spent the next two weeks scrubbing the floors, washing their clothes and cooking delicious meals that neither Kurt nor Burt really had the appetite for.
Eventually, as time went on, some sense of normalcy returned, and even after she had left, they managed to piece their days together in a routine that worked. They still hurt. Kurt still missed his mummy so much he would wake up crying in the middle of the night more often than not, but they were functioning again.

Kurt was eight years old when his father received a letter with a court date for a hearing.

Burt had sat his son down and explained to him that they had to go talk to some people – lawyers and a judge – about the accident. There had been another car involved besides his mummy’s, and the lawyers and the judge had to find out what to do with the other driver. They needed Burt to be there, and, since his grandparents were not able to baby-sit for him, as they lived so far away, Kurt needed to come as well. Kurt had nodded, understood, and, on the day of the hearing, he had held his father’s hand as a man in a grey suit showed them into a room filled with people on benches.

Kurt had not understood much of the hearing itself. He had looked at his father to find him staring at a dark-haired man in a chair. The man looked uncomfortable. He was sweating and looking everywhere but at the two them. After his father had been called down to sit in a chair at the front and answer questions from another man in a suit, they had left the room, Burt visibly shaking and clutching Kurt’s hand tightly. Out in the corridor, his father had gone to find a bathroom, and Kurt had sat down and waited for him to return.
He had been startled when another boy around his age had appeared from around the corner. The other boy looked as frightened as Kurt felt and had looked at him in silence for a moment before Burt had come back, taken Kurt’s hand in his and let him down a set of stairs and out of the building, towards the car.
His father had just buckled him into his safety seat when Kurt’s curiosity got the better of him.
“Who was that man, daddy? The one you were looking at.”
“That was Michael Blaine Anderson.”
“Who’s Michael Blaine Anderson?”
“He’s the man who killed your mother.”