The Choices We Made novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Supervised Sundays

On Sunday at two o'clock, the housekeeper let Eliza in through the side door.

The nanny walked three steps behind her all the way to the garden.

Albie sat on a blanket under the apple tree with a box of crayons. He saw her coming and turned his shoulder.

Eliza did not rush him.

She sat down on the grass an arm's length away and picked up a green crayon.

"I like dinosaurs too," she said.

He said nothing.

She drew a lopsided stegosaurus on the corner of his paper, with too many plates.

He glanced at it. His mouth twitched.

"That's not how many plates it has," he said.

"How many?"

"Seventeen. You did eleven."

"Show me, then."

He took the green crayon out of her fingers and fixed it, tongue between his teeth.

The nanny stood off by the hedge and looked at her watch.

After ten minutes Albie began to hum.

Two low notes. A pause. The same two notes again.

Eliza hummed them back, very softly, without looking at him.

His crayon stopped.

"How do you know that one?"

"It's my song," Eliza said. "My mother hummed it to me. I hummed it to you when you were a baby."

"Syd says it's the house song."

"Does she?"

"She says everyone in our house knows it." He frowned at his paper. "But you hum it different. Lower."

"Is that bad?"

"No." He picked up a blue crayon, and his voice got smaller. "Syd says you're fake."

Eliza kept her hands where they were.

"What does she say?"

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Choices We Made from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.