Chapter 8: Blue Pot

Kari went to the gas station on the corner and came back with a can of ravioli in tomato sauce.

She set it on Dad's workbench and watched me open it with his can opener.

"Sit where I can see your face," I said.

She sat on the bucket with her phone out, already recording.

I scooped a ravioli into a paper cup with a plastic spoon and ate it cold.

I swallowed.

Kari didn't move.

I waited for her to scream.

She watched me take a second one, and a third.

Finally she lowered the phone.

"It's a can of ravioli," she said.

"What do you see?"

"A girl eating out of a paper cup. You've got sauce on your chin."

I started to laugh, and then I had to hold the edge of the bench.

"So it isn't me," I said. "It isn't the pasta, and it isn't my face."

"Then what is it?"

"The people who made it."

I thought it through out loud.

Rosalie Ferrante had made her ravioli herself, since dawn.

The trustee had said every one of his was made with his own hands.

My mother had said she mixed the dough that morning.

"And Dad's stew?"

"I ate none of Dad's stew. Remember?"

Kari looked at me for a long moment.

"You knew. You knew something before you came home."

"Maeve told me not to eat anything anyone cooked for me."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Parents Begged for My Execution on Live TV from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.