Page 54 of Thicker Than Water
For a second, I think I glimpse panic. It rings an alarm inside me,the same one that used to sound whenever he cried in his crib. But it passes so quickly, replaced instead by frustration, which carves Aiden’s features with creases he’s too young to bear.
“I forgot where he keeps them,” he says, voice firm, impenetrable.
“Well, what about Sunday night?” I ask. “You said you didn’t leave the house, but I checked the security app, and it looks like you did go outside. Twice. So why—”
“No I didn’t,” he interrupts.
“It said the front door was opened, right around two.”
“Why are you so sure it was me? Why aren’t you suspecting Dad?”
I pause, lips parted, then glance at Aiden’s Converse, my first hint that something had been off that night. He’s right, though: I haven’t considered it was Jason who triggered the app, nor can I imagine why my husband would go outside, twice, at two in the morning. But as I look at Aiden, he seems so certain—even as his face remains a hard mask, still concealing something.
“Aiden. Is there something you want to tell me?”
He doesn’t answer. He only scrapes the porch with his shoe.
“You can talk to me, you know. About anything.”
He tilts his head, and I think I see his lower lip quiver.
“Even if it’s hard,” I add. “Even if it’s about… Dad.”
Silence pulls taut between us, and in the steel of his eyes, I’m alarmed to see myself reflected back. All his life, I’ve tried to protect him from the sharp edges of everything, blunting the corners of tables, passing him scissors with the blade in my palm—but now, I see it already inside him, that cut-up feeling I know so well, like his tongue is too sliced to speak.
It guts me—even worse, maybe, than the fact of Gavin’s blood on Jason’s knife.
“Aid—”
“My friends are waiting for me,” he says. “Can I just go? I want to hang out with them. Please?” he adds, so soft and young.
It almost makes me cry, him asking for something as simple and necessary as companionship. I nod, grazing his cheek with my knuckles.
“What time should I pick you up?”
“Ryan’s dad is driving us home.”
“Okay. We’ll talk tonight, then? After the semiformal?”
Aiden shrugs as he steps off the porch. “If you actually still want to,” he mumbles.
Walking away, his pace is leaden, and I’m more convinced than ever: my son has secrets weighing him down. If Sienna were here, she’d tell me to force them out, grab him before he goes too far, yank out the truth like a tapeworm. But I understand something Sienna never has: silence can feel like power, like control, and I want that for Aiden, at least tonight.
Which means I need to get the truth,atruth, from someone else. Aiden knows something about Jason—but so does Maeve.
When I return to the kitchen, her brow is furrowed with concern. “I think he heard us,” she says. “Or is he always like that? Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
“Is he always like what?”
“Short. Dismissive.”
The last dance Aiden went to was his eighth-grade formal, before he was this prickly version of himself. He let us take pictures for that one, let me fuss with his tie, and after I posed with him for a photo, I hugged him tightly—something I forgot to even try to do before Aiden left this time.
“He’s going through a lot right now,” I say. “But go back to what you said before. JasonhatesGavin? Why? I’ve barely heard Jason talk about him.”
It’s embarrassing to admit that to her—that she knows things about my husband that are complete surprises to me—but as she drops her gaze, it’s clear she isn’t relishing that fact.
I sit back down, and Maeve takes a deep breath, holding it a moment before letting it out.
