Chapter 2
I moved Noah into my bedroom suite.
Warm bath.
Clean pajamas.
Socks.
Soup.
My birthday dinner could burn down around us for all I cared.
Noah ate too quickly.
I slowed him.
“Small bites.”
He nodded obediently.
Too obediently.
Three-year-olds should negotiate everything.
Mine acted as if being fed could be revoked.
I sat across from him.
“Where do you sleep at home?”
He stopped chewing.
“Room.”
“What room?”
“Downstairs.”
Mark’s house had four upstairs bedrooms.
No child needed to sleep downstairs.
“What’s downstairs?”
Noah looked embarrassed.
“Laundry.”
My breathing changed.
“The laundry room?”
He nodded.
“When?”
“When bad.”
“How often are you bad?”
He thought seriously.
“A lot.”
The answer nearly broke something in me.
I kept my voice calm.
“What makes you bad?”
“Ask Mommy stuff.”
His biological mother.
Anna.
Mark’s first wife.
Dead twenty-two months.
“What stuff?”
“Where Mommy box is.”
There.
I leaned forward.
“What box?”
Noah shook his head.
“Don’t know.”
“Who asks you?”
“Daddy.”
A pause.
“And Claudia.”
I sat very still.
“How do they ask?”
He looked down.
“Claudia says no dinner until remember.”
My hands became fists beneath the table.
“Does Mark know?”
Noah looked confused.
“He sits there.”
That was worse than any answer I expected.
I closed my eyes briefly.
Mark had not failed to notice.
He watched.
Noah pointed toward the wet drawing on the bedside table.
“Mommy said draw Grandpa if scared.”
I opened my eyes.
“When did she say that?”
“Before heaven.”
Children measure time differently.
Anna had told him something before she died.
He might have been barely two.
“How do you remember?”
Noah touched his chest.
“Mommy say lots.”
I picked up the drawing.
Two figures holding hands.
One tall.
One tiny.
A square house behind them.
Mountains.
A crooked red shape beside the trees.
I had assumed it was another house.
“What’s this?”
Noah looked.
“Mommy’s little cabin.”
I stared.
Anna had never owned a cabin.
Mark stepped into the doorway behind my bodyguard.
He saw where my finger was pointing.
And went pale.
May you like
The drawing was not what he wanted destroyed because it was cheap.
It was a map drawn by a child who did not know he was remembering one.
