Page 113 of Roadrunner

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go pick up our son from school.”

Our son.

The words did something to the room that neither of us tried to name out loud, and we drove to the school together in a silence that felt, for the first time in three days, like the ordinary kind.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Alex

Now

Sunday arrived the way Sundays in that house always did.

Full. Warm. Smelling of something Della had been working on since morning.

Arthur came through the front door ahead of me and went straight to the kitchen the way he always did, checking what was on the stove before he said hello to anyone, which Della had decided was the highest compliment and encouraged accordingly.

“Tamales,” he said.

“Your favorite,” Della said.

“How did you know they were my favorite?”

“I know everything,” she said. She kissed the top of his head. “Wash your hands.”

He went to the sink.

I stood in the doorway and looked at Della.

She looked back at me.

Riley was behind me. I felt him.

We ate first.

That was the right thing. Della had made everything and it deserved to be eaten without the weight of what was coming pressing down on it. Arthur ate tamales and rice and a portion of the salad that wasn’t really a salad and talked to Della about school and to Riley about the motorcycle and to me about nothing in particular, which was his way of including everyone equally.

He was a good boy.

He was the best boy.

When the plates were cleared and Della had put the coffee on and Arthur had settled into his chair with the ease of a boy in a place that felt like home, Riley looked at me.

I let out a breath.

“Arthur,” I said.

He looked up.

“We need to talk to you about something,” I said. “All of us.”

He looked at me. Then at Riley. Then at Della. He read the room the way he always read rooms. Thoroughly and without panic.

“Okay,” he said.

He folded his hands on the table.

I started at the beginning.