Page 23

Noelle has been there eight days.

Eight days, and somehow the place already looks less like my house.

More like⁠—

I stop that thought before it finishes.

Outside, the sleet has turned to snow. It drifts past the window in slow, heavy flakes, catching the light from the building across the street.

Six hundred miles away, my son is probably asleep by now. Maybe she read to him. I don’t know which book. I don’t know if she does the voices.

I don’t know a lot of things.

Then I save Dottie’s picture to my camera roll. I tell myself it’s because Shiloh is in it. I don’t examine why I know that’s not entirely true.

chapter

five

Noelle

By the second week, Shiloh decides I’m allowed to tuck him into bed.

This is a very big deal. I know it’s a big deal because he tells me so himself.

“Dottie usually does it,” he informs me from the doorway of his room, one hand wrapped around the frame like he’s guarding it. “Or Daddy. When Daddy’s home.”

“Okay.”

“But you can do it.”

He says it the way a king might grant a small parcel of land. Then he turns and climbs into bed before I can say anything, and I have to stand in the hall for a second and breathe through my nose.

His room is at the end of the upstairs hall, painted the deep blue of a sky right after sunset, with glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling in no particular constellation. There’s a moon-shaped nightlight plugged in beside the bed, the plastic faded and a little yellowed, like it’s been there a long time. A whole herd of plastic dinosaurs is lined up along the windowsill, sorted by some system I haven’t cracked yet.

He picks the book. It’s a picture book about a dinosaur who doesn’t want to go to bed, the spine cracked white and the corners soft as cloth.

I read it once.

“Again,” he says.

I read it again.

By the third time, he’s mouthing the words along with me. By the fourth, his eyes are heavy and he’s tucked against my side, warm and boneless, smelling like strawberry kids’ shampoo and the grilled cheese he had for dinner.

I don’t move. I barely breathe. I’m afraid if I do, he’ll remember he’s not sure about me yet.

When he’s finally asleep, I ease off the bed one inch at a time, pull the comforter up to his chin, and stand there longer than I need to, watching his chest rise and fall.

Grandma used to do this. Stand in my doorway after she thought I was asleep. I always knew she was there. I never told her.

I turn off the lamp and leave the moon on.

And I know it’s an even bigger deal because Dottie stops in the hallway when she sees me coming out of his room.

She has a laundry basket on her hip and a dish towel over one shoulder, and she goes perfectly still, like she’s spotted a deer in the yard and doesn’t want to scare it off.

“He let you?”