How long have you been helping him cover this up?” She adjusted her pearls.

“Don’t be dramatic.” “Six months?” I said.

“A year?” And after a long silence, very softly, she gave me the truth.

“About a year and a half.”

Chapter 8 — A Little Boy’s Spirit

The ordinary noise of the cafe seemed to drop away entirely from my ears.

“A year and a half,” I repeated.

“And in your mind, Charlotte — in whatever version of the world you tell yourself you live in — ‘protecting your son’ involved taking your sick five-year-old grandson out of his own house, so that your son could bring another woman into his wife’s bed.”