The boy began crying around midnight. She had just returned from work, and was hanging up her jacket when she heard him wake up. She trudged mournfully into the dark bedroom, stumbling over the broken toys strewn on the floor. In the blue light from the window he lay on his stomach, sobbing into the pillow. His little shoulders shook.
Her face felt rubbery, "What is it?" she asked tiredly, "Why aren't you asleep?"
The boy looked up timidly and sniffed. His eyes glittered in the dark.
"I had a bad dream, mommy..." He kept choking on himself. "I was all alone... and I was falling, and everything was dark... and then I must've... must've died. I'm so afraid to be dead, mommy... I... I keep thinking about it. Why do people have to die, mommy?" he burst out crying again.
She fell back on the bed beside him. After a night on the job her limbs seemed to melt, and the last will run out of them. She fixed her eyes on a menacing stain on the ceiling. The boy twisted and heaved for a long time beside her.
"What a crazy boy," she cooed a hollow rasp when she sat up again, "...I know dying sounds like a terrible thing t'you now, Timmy, but you won't think so in a few years... And when you've been beaten up by life for as long as I have, dying won't seem frightening at all. You'll start looking forward to it, in fact." She tucked him into the sheets. "Now, wipe off your tears, there, there... good night..."