Page 23 of Cruel Elite (Princes of Ravenlake Academy 3)

“I came home around midnight. You were asleep.”

Technically true, though a white-washed version of the story.

She chews on her lip and tips her head towards the fireplace. “A picture frame broke. Did you do that?”

Most parents would ask a question like this as a ploy to see if their child would confess.

My mom, however, is trying to remember if she broke it herself.

It wouldn’t be the first time. In the height of her grief, before she came to depend on the bottle, she took to breaking china.

Dad’s mom left him a cabinet full of dishes that had been passed down in the family. I’d already told them both from the time I was ten I would never have an interest in displaying the family heirlooms in any home I ever owned.

So, after everything that happened two years ago, she shattered them.

In the sink. On the patio out back. In the basement over dad’s empty safe.

One at a time. Like breaking the plates was the same thing as destroying her grief. Her past. Our family trauma.

She tried to clean up the evidence, no doubt because she was ashamed of her coping mechanism.

But I always found the shards.

And truth be told, I never judged her.

I know how it feels to crave breaking fragile things, too.

“It fell.”

“And what happened to the picture?” she asks.

I’d kicked the pieces under soot in the fireplace. Unless she got down on her hands and knees, she’ll never find them.

I wonder if she remembers falling asleep holding the picture at all.

I shrug and cross my arms. “No idea. I didn’t touch it.”

Mom sighs and takes a long drink of her “orange juice.” She’s wearing a long, blush pink dressing robe and slippers, but I know she must have changed into them this morningaftershe woke up in her work clothes.

She wants to keep up appearances for me, but I see everything.

The only person she’s fooling is herself.

“You seem stressed, Noah. Angry. And I just can’t help but feel like…” Her voice drifts off before she takes another drink and looks up at me, her brown eyes washed out by her dilated pupils. “Is this about your father?”

I groan. I’ve had more than enough heart-to-hearts today. If you can count me telling J.C. to leave Penny the fuck alone as a heart-to-heart.

Most people wouldn’t.

But then again, most people aren’t me.

My mom has enough shit to deal with that I don’t need to add mine to the pile. Besides, she can’t handle her own grief. How does she expect to help me?

“Not everything is about him. I’m fine, just hungover.”

At one time, I’d lie to my mom about my drinking.

But now, Miss Screwdriver-Before-Ten-In-the-Morning doesn’t really have a leg to stand on.

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