Beatrice glanced up at her son, and I could see her expecting the familiar script, expecting Caleb to apologize for the awkwardness, to laugh it off, to make some excuse for the overdramatic child and smooth the whole thing over the way this family always smoothed everything over.

Caleb did none of it.

He looked down at his mother, and his voice, when it came, was flat and quiet and left no room at all for argument.

“Open it, Mom,” he said.

Just that.

Three words, with three years underneath them.

Chapter 25 — The Scream

Beatrice took the little velvet box into her manicured hands, still wearing her smug expression, still, I am certain, composing in her head the rehearsed little lecture she meant to deliver, the one about oversensitive stepchildren and modern permissive parenting and people who simply could not take a joke.