Page 109 of Cruel Kiss

CALI

The house is full of food nobody's going to eat.

I wonder who decided that that's what we do in society. Why is casserole the food of death? Somebody dies and people bring baking dish after baking dish full of the stuff.

Todd's coworkers, a couple of the neighbors, a woman from the PTA I've barely spoken to in a year—all of them come with casseroles in hand. There are three dishes on the counter under tinfoil and a fourth in the fridge and a pie somebody left on the stoop with a card I haven't opened.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do with any of it. Who craves casserole after a funeral? Or ever? But they keep coming, so I keep taking them. Now, my counter looks like a church potluck for a party that nobody wants to be at.

The funeral clothes are draped over the banister. Hayden's little gray suit, Isabella's dark blue dress with the white collar, my own black shift I peeled off the second we got in the door. I mean to hang them up, but I can't quite find the energy. It's been a long day.

I feed the kids toast for dinner, and thankfully, they don't complain that it's not Ronan's usual gourmet offerings. Isabella eats hers with the crusts off. Hayden eats his standing up at the counter, quiet, not reading me a single fact about a single fish.

That's how I know he heard the whispers.

He's been too quiet since the treeline. My boy who narrates the ordeals of life on the ocean floor at me without ever pausing for breath has said maybe six words since we left the cemetery. I've been waiting for the inevitable question.

It comes at bath time.

Ronan is upstairs with him. He offered, and I let him, because I couldn't do it—I was down here staring at tinfoil trying to remember how to be a person. So Ronan's up there running the water and Isabella's already down and I'm at the bottom of the stairs when I hear it.

Hayden's voice. He sounds so grown up.

"Did you kill my dad?"

I stop with my hand on the banister, over the bedraggled length of his little black bow tie.

I could go up. I could burst in and manage it, smooth it over, give my boy the answer wrapped in cotton the way I've wrapped everything for him his whole life.

But then, as soon as I start to move, I stop again.

Because he didn't ask me; he asked Ronan. And Ronan deserves the chance to answer.

There's a pause up there. The water's off. I picture Ronan crouched down beside the tub, giving the question the moment of seriousness it deserves.

"No," Ronan says. "No. I didn't."

Another pause. I hold my breath at the bottom of the stairs.

Then, Hayden again: "You're not lying to me, right? You've never lied to me before."

I hear myself in my little boy's question. The hope.

"No," Ronan says, "I haven't. And I'm too old and too tired to start now, especially with the one person in this house who'd actually catch me."

I hear the tub water shift. My boy, deciding.

"Okay," Hayden says. "I believe you."

That's all it takes.Okay.The audit clears. The number comes back clean.

I press the back of my hand to my mouth and retreat into the kitchen so I don't stand there and cry on the stairs where they might hear me.

He'd have known if I lied. They always do.Ronan said that to me weeks ago.

But I mean, c'mon. He's a lawyer. That's literally a professional liar. And one nine-year-old boy, as smart as he might be, is gonna catch him in a fib?

But also,yes,c'mon. Ronan won't let us down.