My Parents Begged for My Execution on Live TV novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Bowl

"Don't touch the fork."

Maeve stood in the pantry door with flour up to her wrists.

Her green scarf was around her neck. Her braid had come half undone.

She looked thinner than she had in the hall, and her eyes were red.

"You're here," I said. It came out as a croak.

"Where else would I be? It's Nan's kitchen."

"You told me to go home."

"And you went home, and now I've ruined that too." She wiped her hands on her jeans. "Sit down, Nina. Please. I'll tell you the whole thing."

"Not at that table."

She almost smiled. "No. Not at that table."

We sat on the two stools by the stove.

The ravioli went on steaming behind her.

"When we were nine," Maeve said, "you were dying on the road. Nan sat by your bed, fed you from her wooden spoon, and said the words her mother said to her."

"The bread and milk."

"It wasn't only bread and milk. Our family comes from people called sin-eaters. A sin-eater eats a meal for someone and takes on what that person did wrong."

"That's an old story," I said. "A funeral custom."

"It's not a story. Nan did it for you so you could live, and it didn't stop when you got well."

I stared at her.

"Here is how it works," she said. Her voice was steady, as if she had practiced it. "If you swallow a meal that someone has made by hand, and that person is hiding a terrible thing they did, the terrible thing goes onto you."

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