Page 131 of Trust No One

I laid out peanut butter and white bread. I’d lived on the stuff when I was in law school. My dorm office desk drawer had always been stocked with a loaf of bread and a jar.

Creamy peanut butter smoothed over the bread. “Want me to trim the crust off?”

“Mommy never did.”

“Did Amy?” The casual question slipped out.

“Yeah.”

“Want me to leave it?”

She considered the question. “No, cut it off. I never eat it anyway.”

“Why didn’t your mom cut the crust off?” A silly question, but we were talking, and she wasn’t locked in a sullen silence.

“She said it was a waste of time. She said I could eat around it.”

I smiled faintly. “Makes sense, I guess. Bet you can nibble right up to the edges.”

“I can.”

I trimmed the sandwich and angled the knife at the halfway point and then at a diagonal. “What shape?”

“Sideways.”

The knife slid through the bread, and I pushed it toward her. I wasn’t fooled by the ease of this morning. We were both in shock. And soon the numbness would wear off. And she’d start testing as kids did, and I’d get frustrated and question my sanity.

“Why don’t you have kids?” Molly asked.

“It was never the right time, I guess.”

She pinched off a portion of the sandwich. “Mommy said you’re married.”

“I was. Or at least it’s about to end.”

“You’re getting a divorce.”

It wasn’t odd that she’d heard the word before. “Sometimes marriages end.”

Molly popped the piece in her mouth. “Was someone bad?”

Her words carried more weight than she knew. I smeared peanut butter on a single slice of bread, folded it in half. “What do you mean?”

“Mommy and Daddy fought. When I asked why, Mommy said Daddy was bad.”

“Oh.”

“Was your husband bad?”

My fingers sank into the soft bread. Relationship counseling from a five-year-old. “No one was bad. We just needed to live in different houses.”

“Why?”

“I live here now. He lives in the city. That’s all.”

She ate. Small bites, but steady. A little victory. I filled a glass with water and set it in front of her. “When we go into town, I’ll buy juice and milk.”

“You don’t have any?”