Never In Another Life novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Ten Minutes

Alone with Sammy, Kira learns who drives him to school, and Margo walks in.

I held my son's face in both hands.

"When did she teach you that?"

"Yesterday. In her car." Sammy chewed his lip. "She said it was a surprise game for you."

"Did Daddy hear it?"

"No. She made me practice while Daddy was in the gas station."

I closed my eyes.

Three years of nights, and I had never once let myself picture her voice in my son's ear.

"Is it a bad game?" he asked.

"It's not a game, baby. It's a bad thing to say about Grandma. You did nothing wrong."

He nodded slowly, like he was filing it away.

Then he took my left hand and turned it over.

His thumb found the small pale mark on the inside of my wrist.

"I did that," he said. "I bit you when I was three."

"You did."

"Daddy said it was how I'd know you were really you."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

"You bit me because I wouldn't let you have a second cookie."

"It was a good cookie."

"It was a very good cookie."

He leaned his forehead against my arm.

I put my other hand on the back of his head and felt every bone of his skull.

He smelled like a car heater and cheap shampoo and, underneath that, himself.

I had not known a person could be starved for a smell.

"Mommy?"

"Yes."

"Are you here because of me?"

"What do you mean?"

"Because I told." His voice went very small. "I didn't tell. I promise. I never told anyone what happened on the stairs."

Every muscle in my back went tight.

I kept my voice flat and low, the way I used to talk to frightened kids in the pediatric ward.

"What happened on the stairs, Sammy?"

He shook his head hard.

"Aunt Margo said if I told, they would put you in jail forever."

"Who is they?"

"The police. The ones who came to the house."

"Baby, nobody is putting me in jail for something you say."

"She said it was why you went in the water."

I could not feel my hands.

For three years I had told myself I'd had no choice but to leave.

And all that time a four-year-old had been carrying the idea that his silence was what kept me out of a cell.

"Look at me," I said. "You didn't make me go in the water. Not one thing you did or didn't say made me go."

"Then why did you go?"

It was the question I had practiced answers to for three years.

None of them fit in the room.

"Because grown ups were cruel to me," I said. "And I thought I was the only one who could stop them."

"Daddy was cruel?"

"Daddy was a coward. That's a different thing."

Sammy thought about it with the grave frown he used to wear over a hard puzzle.

"Daddy cries in the car," he said.

"Does he?"

"Every year on the day. He thinks I'm asleep."

I looked at the door.

Through the small glass window I could see the back of Declan's head, his shoulders rounded, his hands hanging open at his sides.

I turned away.

"Where do you live now, Sammy? Who do you live with?"

"Daddy has the apartment by the clinic. But we go to Grandma Constance's on weekends, and she has the big house, and Aunt Margo has the room next to mine."

"She lives in your grandmother's house?"

"She moved in when Daddy was away."

"Away where?"

His eyes slid sideways.

"Away," he said. "Aunt Margo says we don't say where."

My skin prickled.

I filed it beside the other thing.

"And who takes you to school?"

"Aunt Margo does on Mondays. She brings me a muffin with sprinkles and she lets me pick the radio."

That should have sounded kind.

Instead, it sounded calculated, part of a patient plan.

The ventilator hissed behind me and clicked.

My mother's chest rose and fell under the blanket.

I looked at her sleeping face, and then at the small cold hand in mine.

"Sammy, I need you to hear one thing."

"Okay."

"I am not going to let anyone hurt Grandma. And I am not going to let anyone teach you to say things you don't mean. Do you understand?"

"Okay."

"Promise me that when Aunt Margo says something that feels strange, you will tell me or Daddy."

"I can't tell you," he said. "You're not at my house."

The simple logic of it nearly took me apart.

"Then tell Daddy," I said. "And tell him I said it."

Out in the hall, someone laughed too brightly.

A voice I had known for eleven years carried through the door, high and warm and full of tears.

"Where is she? Oh, where is she? Declan, let me through."

Sammy's whole body flinched against mine.

I stood up with him behind my legs.

The door swung open, and Margo Winslade came in with her arms already spread wide.

"Kira?" she whispered. "Oh, thank God. Oh, thank God, you're alive."

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