He Called Our Son a Curse, Now I Own His Company novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Breakfast With a Liar

She plays the loving wife, Camille arrives with a toy ferry Max hides from, and when Landon hands her the pages she says she will read them first.

I did not sleep.

Landon came home at one, and I lay still with my eyes shut while he undressed in the dark.

He smelled of her perfume, something sweet with vanilla in it.

He kissed the top of my head before he lay down, and I let him.

At six I got up and made pancakes, because Max eats pancakes on school days, cut into twelve squares with the syrup on the side.

My hands knew what to do, so I let them.

Landon came into the kitchen at seven in a fresh shirt, humming.

"Smells great, Jo."

"Max made you something," I said.

I slid the drawing out of its tube and put it beside his coffee.

Landon glanced at it and looked back at his phone.

"Nice, buddy," he said, and reached over to ruffle Max's hair.

Max went rigid.

He ducked under the table with his headphones clamped to his ears and stayed there, his knees pulled up and his eyes on the floor.

"Don't touch his head," I said. "You know he hates that."

"I was being friendly." Landon laughed it off. "He's a strange kid sometimes, Jo."

I kept my voice light.

"He likes it when you say his name first, and then he knows you're coming."

"Max," Landon said to the tabletop. "Hey, Max."

Max did not answer, because Max does not answer people who are looking at the tabletop.

I knelt down and put a square of pancake on the floor beside him.

He took it.

"Blue is Daddy," he told the table leg, and pushed the drawing toward the edge so the boat stuck out where I could reach.

I saw Landon's mouth go tight for half a second.

Then he looked at his watch and said, "I'm going to be late."

The doorbell rang.

It was ten past seven, an hour before anybody should be visiting.

Landon went to answer it, and I heard Camille's bright voice in the hall.

"I was passing the building! I couldn't resist."

She came into the kitchen with a shopping bag and her auburn hair freshly blown out, and she kissed me on the cheek.

"Joanna, you look so tired. Is he sleeping at all?"

"Sometimes," I said.

"I brought him something."

It was a heavy die-cast model of a harbor ferry, painted green and white, with a real tiny deck rail.

It was exactly the boat Max drew every day.

I had never told her the name of that ferry.

"How did you know which one it was?" I asked.

"Landon mentioned it." She smiled at me. "I've got a good memory."

Max stayed under the table.

Camille crouched with the boat held out in her palm, and she kept her voice sweet and slow.

"Hi, Max. Look what I found. Do you want to come and see?"

Max pushed himself back against the wall.

He lifted one hand, palm out, which is how he says no.

"He's shy," Camille said, and she kept holding it toward him.

"He's not shy," I said. "He said no."

"Of course." She put the boat on the chair, a little too far from where he sat, and stood up.

"Camille will drive me in," Landon told me, getting his jacket. "We have the board prep at eight."

"Of course she will," I said.

He did not hear anything in that.

On his way to the door he stopped by the counter and tapped the yellow-tabbed stack.

"Don't forget these. Legal wants them back by noon."

"I won't forget."

"It's the usual." He was already looking at his phone. "Sign where the tabs are, drop them with Camille. Easy."

"Easy," I agreed.

Max made a small sound under the table.

I looked down.

He had reached out one hand and slid his drawing closer to himself, and now he was holding it flat against his chest.

I stood there with the pancake knife in my hand while my husband and the woman he had been with last night waited for me to say goodbye.

I thought of the folder I had named Max's School.

I thought of the four minutes on my phone.

Then I thought of the six years of signatures, and I knew I was not ready to hand either of them another one.

I picked up the stack, and I held it against my chest the way Max held his drawing.

"I'll read them first," I said.

Landon's smile stopped.

It did not fall, it simply stopped, and his eyes went to the stack in my arms.

"Read them?" he said. "Since when do you read them?"

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