Chapter 16 · He Answers the Kid

"I was unkind to Mommy."

Maya says it into her cereal bowl, spoon stopped halfway, milk dripping back down. She doesn't look up. Five years old and she's already confessing like she's on trial.

I'm standing in the kitchen doorway in yesterday's shirt because the custody schedule has me sleeping on Avery's couch now, three nights a week, court-ordered proximity so Maya doesn't get whiplash between two houses. Avery hates it. I don't blame her. I hate it too, mostly because I keep waking up at 3 a.m. wanting to walk down the hall and look at a kid who used to not exist to me.

"Unkind how?" I ask, and I crouch down so I'm not looming over the stool.

Maya's chin wobbles. "I said I hate bedtime. I said it mean. Mommy's face did the thing."

"What thing?"

"The thing where she smiles but it's not real."

Something about that lands in my chest like a dropped glass. Because I know that smile. I've been on the receiving end of it for five years — the polite, professional, *don't-worry-about-it* smile Avery gives right before she goes somewhere I can't follow her.

"That's not being unkind," I tell Maya.