Page 47 of Malibu Rising

Kit was quiet, trying to figure out if she regretted what she’d said. After all, regret would imply she felt like she’d made a choice. Andshe hadn’t. She felt she’d had no other option but to say out loud what was hurting so much within her.

When Nina and Kit disappeared down the hall, Jay and Hud looked back at their mother.

“We will clean up, Mom,” Hud said. “You can go lie down.”

Hud caught Jay’s eye. “Yeah,” Jay said, despite the dread growing within him that it was going to be his job to clean up burnt cheese. “Hud and I have this under control.”

June looked at her two sons, already fourteen. They were almost men. How had she not noticed that?

“All right,” she said, exhausted. “I think I’m going to go to sleep.” And for the first time in a long time, she walked into her bedroom, put on her pajamas, and fell asleep in her bed.

The boys cleaned up the kitchen. Jay scrubbed the Pyrex as hard as he could to get the char off. Hud poured out the full glasses and wiped down the light dusting of ash on the counter where the smoke had settled.

“Kit’s right,” Jay said in a whisper as he stopped scrubbing for just a moment and caught Hud’s eye.

Hud looked at him. “I know.”

“We never talk about it,” Jay said, his whisper growing louder.

Hud stopped cleaning the counter. He took a deep breath and then let it out as he spoke. “I know.”

“She almost set fire to the kitchen,” Jay said.

“Yeah.”

“Should we …” Jay found it difficult to finish his sentence.Should we call Dad?Jay wasn’t even sure how they would do such a thing. They didn’t know where their father was or how to contact him. If they did, Jay would have liked the chance to see him. But once, years ago, when Hud had broken his nose falling off the monkey bars at school and needed surgery to have it straightened, Jay overheard June tell his grandmother, “I would sooner turn tricks off the highway than call Mick and ask him for anything.” So evensaying it out loud, even suggesting it, seemed to dishonor his mother. And he wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t. “I guess I’m saying, what are we supposed to do?”

Hud frowned and sighed, searching for an answer. He finally sat down at the table, resigned. “I have no idea.”

“I mean, this whole thing with Mom … She’s just in a bad, like, moment, right?” Jay asked. “This isn’t a forever thing?”

“No, of course not,” Hud said. “It’s just a phase or something.”

“Yeah,” Jay said, assuaged. He picked up the scrubber again, grinding away at the cheese. “Yeah, totally.”

The brothers looked at each other, and in one flash of a second, it was perfectly clear to both of them that there was a big difference between what you needed to believe and what you actually believed.

When they were done, they brought a half-eaten bag of chips and a box of Ritz crackers into Kit’s room, where Nina and Kit were sitting on the floor, talking.

The four of them sat there, eight greasy hands being rubbed off on eight pant legs.

“We should get napkins,” Nina said.

“Oh, no, are there crumbs on the floor?” Jay teased her. “Call the cops!”

Kit started laughing. Hud pretended to dial a phone. “Hello? Crumb police?” he said. Jay got so hysterical, he nearly choked on a Ritz.

“Yeah, uh, Sergeant Crackers here,” Kit said, as if she was speaking into the handheld radio. “We’ve heard reports of loud crunching.”

Something broke inside of Nina too, causing a wild and loud laugh to escape her mouth. The bizarre sound of it made them all laugh harder.

“All right, all right,” Nina said, calming down. “We should get to bed.”

They got up and put the food away. They put their pajamas on. They brushed their teeth.

“Everything’s going to be OK,” Nina said to each of her siblings as she said good night that evening. “I promise you that.”

Upon hearing it, Jay’s shoulders relaxed one tenth of a percent, Hud exhaled, Kit released her jaw.

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