Page 23 of Never Forget
Loretta left shortly after to grab more clothes from her place, kissing Rosie's forehead on her way out.
The house went quiet. Sam and I stayed at the table, cups of coffee gone cold between us. Rosie was in the living room with her blocks.
Sam's eyes drifted to the ceiling above the stove. "Is that still there?"
I followed his gaze. The faint pink shadow, almost invisible unless you knew where to look. "Mom repainted twice. It never fully went away."
"The volcano."
"Jack's science fair project. Which we were absolutely not supposed to touch."
Sam leaned back in his chair. "We were just testing the hypothesis."
"You wanted to see if pickle juice would work."
"It did work. It worked great." He was smiling now, the first real smile I'd seen from him in days. "And then you said we should try ketchup."
"Because the lava needed to look more realistic."
"And then someone added dish soap."
"That was you."
"That was absolutely you."
I was laughing, my hand pressed to my mouth like I could push it back down. "It just kept growing. It wouldn't stop foaming."
"And you grabbed the food coloring?—"
"To make it red?—"
"The whole bottle?—"
"It was supposed to be lava!"
Sam shook his head, but he was laughing too now. "It was on the ceiling, Jamie. It was on the ceiling and the cabinets and the floor and we had red foam in our hair?—"
"And then Jack walked in."
The memory sharpened. Jack, thirteen years old, standing in the doorway with his backpack still on. Taking one look at the two eight-year-olds covered in pink sludge, the kitchen looking like a crime scene. He didn’t say a word. He just dropped his bag and grabbed the mop.
"He cleaned for an hour," I said. "Tried to get the food coloring off the ceiling with Windex."
"Made it worse. Turned everything purple."
"And when Mom came home, he told her he'd done it. That he was showing us how volcanoes worked and it got out of hand."
"Got his allowance docked for a month."
"He never told them it was us."
The laughter faded. Sam was watching me across the table, lamplight catching the tired lines around his eyes.
"That was Jack," he said quietly. "Always cleaning up our messes."
The kitchen felt smaller. The air between us shifted into something I didn't dare name.
Then Rosie appeared at my elbow with her stuffed rabbit clutched to her chest.
