My next couple of posts will get us caught up to where I am now. Back in New York, the morning after I confronted Zulya, a crash in the kitchen woke me. Dante, still wearing sweatpants over pajamas, was looking at a shattered peanut butter jar on the floor. A plate next to him on the counter held a slice of bread heaped with a half cup of jam. \u201cI broke the peanut butter,\u201d he said when I came in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaking breakfast.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so early.\u201d My watch read 5:57. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you wait for Lucia?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want Lucia to take me to school this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to see Daddy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daddy<\/em>. When I had put him to sleep the night before, I remembered suddenly, he had bombarded me with questions about subway stops. \u201cOh, honey. You can\u2019t go see Daddy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe said he would read some Treasure Island<\/em> to me tonight. And you won\u2019t let Daddy come here, so I have to go to his apartment.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDante, come here.\u201d\u00a0 He came, and I held him by the shoulders. \u201cListen, Dante, I know how much you love your Daddy and\u201d — I had to breathe for a moment — \u201cyou will see him again, only not today. Not, maybe, for a little while.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know. Mommy has to figure out some things.\u201d I hadn\u2019t spoken of myself in the third person for years. \u201cBut everything will be okay. I promise.\u201d<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t answer, and I couldn’t find him inside his eyes. \u201cI love you,\u201d I said. \u201cYou know that.\u201d And still he wouldn\u2019t speak. \u201cDante?\u201d I pulled him to me, but he held himself hard against me, refusing even to exhale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" He didn\u2019t answer, and I couldn’t find him inside his eyes. \u201cI love you,\u201d I said. \u201cYou know that.\u201d And still he wouldn\u2019t speak. \u201cDante?\u201d I pulled him to me, but he held himself hard against me, refusing even to exhale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[41,53,59,21,57,22,58],"class_list":["post-742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrienne","tag-interactive-novel","tag-poly","tag-poly-children","tag-polyamorous","tag-polyamory-literature","tag-polyamory-novel","tag-troubled-child"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":745,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions\/745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}