Billy followed the smell of oil and fried meat to the kitchen. Tricia stood at the stove, prodding the chops with an orange spatula long deformed by the heat. The oil spat and sizzled, filling the small room with the distinctive waft of browned lamb and rosemary.

Tricia moved to the door and called the children. The three filed in and took their places. Billy avoided looking at Michael’s empty chair. Tricia plated the food. The meat pink and juicy. The fried potatoes black-gritted and glistening.

She carried more food to the table. So much food, as if she was still cooking for a family of six. Billy sliced open his lamb chop and found himself hesitating.

Tricia took her seat opposite him. “How is everyone?” she asked with a staged brightness. The social worker had emphasized the importance of checking in with each other.

Billy tried to sound more casual. “Yeah, what did you all get up to today?”

John gripped his knife and fork hard, his knuckles yellow-white. “Why do you both keep asking how we are? All the time now, it’s the same old thing—”

Billy grasped at the right words. “We just want you all to know we care.” The social worker and school counselors had said the children seemed to be doing as well as could be expected, but he and Tricia would never again trust the surface of things.

“That’s right,” Tricia said. “We’re here if you need anything, anything at all.”

John’s attention remained on his meal, but his cheeks flared red. Anna and Ivor looked out from wide, sad eyes.

“Eat up,” Billy said gently.

John’s knife and fork tore into his chop, as though he was killing it again. He had his grandfather’s hard, square jaw. His temper, too. The boy’s knife screeched across his plate, making the roots of Billy’s teeth hum.

“Take it easy, can’t you,” Billy said, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice. Tricia’s eyebrows shot up. A warning. They had to be careful. They had to do a better job with the remaining three.

The Beatles’ Yesterday floated out of the radio. Tricia crossed the room and powered it off. John chewed his meat as though still slaying it. Ivor’s chubby hand pushed a wad of bread into his mouth, his chin shiny with butter. Anna inspected the lump of potato on her fork. Tricia remained at the window, her back to them and her arms wrapped around what was left of her. Billy pushed away his plate. His dinner untouched. A first.

Tricia whirled around, her smile fastened to herself as hard as her arms. She rattled on about her morning shift at the chemist. Some strange fella had wanted them to sell his homemade potion, a “cure” for rashes related to the measles and chicken pox and the like. “He couldn’t understand why we refused, imagine that,” she said, her forced amusement back.

Anna chimed in about the Sullivan twins in her class, home sick with the mumps. “Their necks swelled like melons.”

The banter went round the table. Billy sat smiling and nodding, adding the odd comment. Inside, though, he couldn’t stop the churn of panic, awful sensations that had descended after Michael and which were getting worse by the day. The more he ached to turn back time and undo the unthinkable, the more the torment built. As his family chatted, clocks ticked in his head like bombs, their black arms turning wildly forward, carrying them forever into the future and farther away from Michael.

His attention jumped to the vase of lilies Tricia had moved to the counter, in the farthest corner. He could still catch their smell. The slice of the spades filling in Michael’s grave started up again in his head, a wet, rhythmic music. He saw his naked reflection in the wardrobe mirror upstairs. He was killing himself. Not nearly as swiftly or brutally as Michael, but killing himself just the same. view abbreviated excerpt only...

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