Malibu Rising: A Novel, Taylor Reid [best fantasy books to read TXT] 📗

and watched his face tense, his eyes focus in on her. He was trying to tell her to drop it. But Kit just couldn’t do it.

“If she doesn’t want to eat it, she doesn’t have to eat it,” Jay said.

“I’ll go make us all something else,” Nina said.

“No, Nina, this is fine. Katherine Elizabeth, sit down and eat your food,” June said.

Kit looked at her mother, searched for some embarrassment or confusion. But June’s face showed nothing out of the ordinary.

Kit finally snapped. “We’re not going to pretend you didn’t just burn dinner like we pretend you’re not a drunk!”

The whole house went quiet. Jay’s jaw dropped. Hud’s eyes went wide in shock. Nina looked down at her hands in her lap. June stared at Kit as if Kit had just slapped her across the face.

“Kit, go to your room,” June said, tears forming in her eyes.

Kit stood there, silent and unmoving. She was awash in a tumbling cycle of guilt and indignation, indignation and guilt. Was she terribly wrong or had she been exactly right? She couldn’t tell.

“C’mon, Kit,” Nina said, getting up and putting her napkin on the table. Nina grabbed her hand gently and led her away. “It’s OK,” Nina whispered to her as they walked.

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. And she 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 even saying 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.

Despite having long ago learned some people don’t keep their promises, all three of the younger Rivas knew they could believe her.

4:00 P.M.

Nina stood in her bedroom at the very top of the mansion. It had been rendered spotless. The floor-to-ceiling windows that faced southeast to the ocean were so clean that, were it not for the frames themselves, you would have thought you were looking at open air. In still and perfectly clear moments like this, when Nina could see out past the cliffs, across the rippling sea, as far as