He spread Dijon on each stack of bread.
“I was home in the house alone from the time I was seven because she had to go to auditions and she had to be on set. That was why Dad left. Mom was more interested in Genny’s career than anything in this family.” He cracked open a package of turkey. “My sister was smart, but it messed with her head. I was screwed up, but she was worse. Way worse.” He let a slice of meat hover over the second sandwich.
“Turkey’s fine.”
He dropped it onto the bread, piling it deli-style. I hadn’t put together what was going on, but it wasn’t water under the bridge for him. Whatever had happened had blocked up the river and drowned the valley. I didn’t want to sate a curiosity; I wanted to know what he needed from me.
“You’re judging me,” he said.
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Lettuce and tomato?”
“Whatever you’re having is fine.”
He sliced the tomato. “My sister and her ex were slaughtered like animals. She made me crazy, but she didn’t deserve it. Nobody deserves that. Her son”—he jerked the knife upward, where Phin was sulking in his room—“saw the whole thing.”
I put my hand over my mouth when it clicked into place.
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“He was four and a half. He doesn’t remember it. Sometimes with ADHD, memories don’t stick, but no one knows if he forgot because his brain’s made of Teflon or because the experience was traumatic. I don’t want to find out. I never wanted him to see the crime-scene photos, but they’re all over the internet. I never wanted him to know who his mother was because he’d find them and remember. We took Genevieve’s money and fought the press to keep his name buried. I got into security so I could be more flexible and take care of him. We bought this house under a new name and made up stories he could tell himself until he had distant memories of a pretty lady.” He sliced the two sandwiches into rectangular halves. “She was beautiful, my sister. Really beautiful.”
“I didn’t know.” I took his hand. He was shaking. “I would have stopped him, but looking for his birth certificate . . . it didn’t seem like a big deal.”
“It’s not your job to protect him.” He pushed a plate to me and sat across the nook. “It’s mine. Was mine. Now he knows I lied.” He looked me in the eyes as if he expected to find an answer there. “How am I supposed to protect him now?”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know how to keep a cat safe. I couldn’t tell him what to do or offer a word of advice, but he needed me. I was here, and he needed me.
I went to his side of the nook, put my knee on the bench, and took his face in my hands. This strong, stable man looked about ready to break. My heart twisted. I shouldn’t have been in the house when this went down, but there I was, and maybe it was for the best.
“Can you talk to him?” I asked.
“No.”
“Really?”
He coiled his fingers around my wrists and pulled them off his face.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
I started to object, but he kissed my wrists, then my lips. He wrapped his arms around me, and we held each other until another thump came from upstairs.
CHAPTER 47
CARTER
He was under his bed, and really, who could blame him? I’d be under my bed too. I shut the door behind me and sat on the floor. It was cleaner in here than his workroom, but I still had to move a couple of books and a wool cap out of the way.
“Hey. How are you under there?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” His disembodied voice came clearly from under the bed. He’d pushed art supplies and a box of clothes he’d outgrown from under it.
“Okay.”
“The only way I’m getting an A on this project is if I make stuff up. So either I can go all in and say my mother is Diana Prince from Amazonia and she was sculpted from clay by Queen Hippolyta, or I can go with plausible deniability.”
“Is that the same as lying?”
“We talked about verisimilitude in humanities.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“It means truthy. Like truthiness. Just that. A truthy tree. I just need an A, and that means I just need truthiness and for you to sign it.”
It sounded a lot like lying, but I’d put him in a terrible spot. There was no way he could digest what he’d just learned and get an A on his family tree project at the same time.
Not that it mattered. What I observed as a cop is that people who experience trauma will get stuck on what they were doing right before the event. A woman attacked on the way to the grocery store will worry about how the attack is keeping her fridge empty.
“Here’s what you need to do. Keep the project the way it is. It’s mostly true anyway. Or it’s the truth as you’ve known it.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. I lay on the floor with my cheek to the rug. He was facing me, the light from his watch shining on his tear-streaked face. He looked like a toddler again with smooth skin and rounded features, crying over a cookie or a missed nap. When I first took him in, I thought he’d always be that small, that easy to guard. I never planned for the inevitable. Mom told me it would happen. My nephew would get older and wiser, the march of information would pass, and he’d see what I’d hidden from him.
“I can’t figure it out. She had the name Kincaid before you were married? Or together? Is that a coincidence? And who was that George guy?”
“Genevieve was my sister. George was your biological father.”
I never doubted my decision to wipe his first years clean until he looked at me from under the bed with his cheek squished against the floor and an Obi-Wan Kenobi above his head. I wanted to say I was sorry, but I wasn’t. Not really. I was uncomfortable and sympathetic, but given the choice, I would have done the same thing. I just would have done it better.
“I wanted to protect you.”
“From what?”
It was a good question. The only question. But the answer would hurt him the most. If I told him he’d been there and I didn’t want him to remember, would that trigger the memories?
I took three seconds to think about it, but Phin didn’t have time for that. He went right to the next thing.
“Is the guy coming? The one who . . . did it?”
“No. He killed himself.”
“Does he have any kids? Is his mom mad? I don’t want them to find us.”
“Phin . . .”
“I’m scared.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“I don’t care about the project. I don’t want to hand it in tomorrow. What if someone sees through it? What if they know? They’ll come and find us. Grandma’s here too, and if someone kills her, then, oh . . .”
He broke down into a fugue of panic.
I reached for him. His eyes were huge, just like his mother’s.
“The man who killed your mother had a nice family. They don’t want to hurt you. They feel very sorry about what he did. You are safe.”
“Then why did you want to protect me? From what?”
“Did anything you saw jog a memory?” I didn’t want to ask because I was afraid of the answer, but if he remembered, he’d need help coping.