So it would be ready, he'd explained, when Papa came home.
He didn't say, Minna had told her.
But he didn't say no, either. Aislinn wrapped her arms around herself in the doorway and decided she could live on that.
She'd lived on less.
Chapter Sixteen
"HOW WAS SCHOOL?"
"It was good." Louis buckled his seatbelt with both hands, as he'd been taught, and looked out the limousine window at the school gates sliding past. "How was your day, Mama?"
"It was good."
And that was the whole conversation, there and back, most days now.
Neither of them were lying.
Because both of them always wanted to see the good in the bad, even in times it felt impossible. Aislinn watched her son watch New York go by, this brand-new city with its brand-new school where nobody knew them, where his blazer was the right size and the right label and had never belonged to anyone else first, and she thought her heart would break at how perfectly it fit him. He used to swim in his clothes. He used to narrate the entire school day without being asked, every slight and triumph and lunchroom scandal, until she knew his classmates better than her own coworkers.
Their life now, the penthouse they lived in, everything was beautiful. And they were grateful, so very grateful.
But...
That was what hurt the most.
They wanted to be grateful and content, but right now it just hurt so, so much for Louis and her, to have this life without...
Don’t think about it.
Just don’t.
She still had Louis. That was the sentence she started every morning with. She still had Louis, and Minna came by twice a week with groceries she didn't need to bring and legal updates Aislinn didn't fully follow, and Minna had promised, in the plain unadorned voice she used for things that were simply true, that they would never lack for money and never be unsafe again. She had to be grateful for the little things. And she was. She was grateful the way you're grateful in a waiting room, sincerely, and while listening for footsteps in the hall.
She was just sad.
Like her little boy was trying not to be.
It came out over dinner, finally, on a Thursday, over roast chicken neither of them was eating. Louis set down his fork, aligned it with the edge of his plate, and asked the question she'd watched him hold in his small body for almost a week.
"He's not coming back, is he?"
"He's coming back." She said it without letting herself blink. "He promised. We can trust him, so we'll trust him."
"Is he mad at us?"
"No, of course not." She reached across and covered his hand. "But right now, he's sad."
"Why?"
She looked at her son, her brilliant, terrifying son, who read rooms like other children read comics. "You really don't know?"
"I kept my promise, Mama." His chin came up. "I didn't hack."
Oh, her heart. "Thank you. You're a good boy."
"But I'm sad, too." His voice finally wobbled, only a little, only at the end. "I miss him."
