Chapter 2: What Caleb Finally Said
Nia ate slowly, like she was afraid someone would take the plate away.
I watched her hand shake around the fork and I had to look down at the table to hold myself together.
Vanessa had not sat back down.
She stood near the counter with her arms crossed, watching me the way she watched people she had already decided were wrong.
"You're making a scene," she said.
"In front of the children."
"I'm having dinner with my daughter."
"You're humiliating me."
I looked up.
"Vanessa.
How long?"
She said nothing.
"Caleb." My voice came out steady, but my chest was not.
"How long has your sister been eating in the kitchen?"
Caleb's jaw tightened.
He was fifteen.
Old enough to know.
Old enough to have said something.
"Since last year," he said quietly.
Last year.
Nia kept her eyes on her plate.
Ava had stopped crying.
She was watching me with something that looked like relief and fear at the same time.
Then Vanessa said the thing that changed everything.
"It was your mother's idea."
The table went completely silent.
Nia's fork stopped moving.
I turned slowly.
"What did you just say?"
Vanessa's chin lifted.
"Call her.
Ask her yourself."
My mother had been staying with us every time I traveled.
I had arranged it.
I had trusted it.
I pulled out my phone.
May you like
My hands were no longer shaking.
They had gone still in a way that felt much worse.
