Mad Honey: A Novel by Jodi Picoult, Jennifer Finney Boylan

hip and briskly turn the knob, as if I’ve been invited in. Asher lies still on his bed, staring at the ceiling, his eyes so red it looks as if all the blood vessels have burst. He isn’t crying. He’s barely breathing.
    “I know you said you aren’t hungry,” I say softly. “But just in case.”
    There’s a canyon between us.
    “If you want to talk—”
    The slightest shiver, a no .
    “Maybe if you eat something, you’ll feel better…?”
    Silence.
    I retreat to the door again, realizing that there isn’t any food I could cook that would fill the hole inside him. That I brought him a tray to make me feel better, not him.
----
    —
    AN HOUR LATER, I knock on Asher’s door again. He is in the same position, his eyes still open. The soup is untouched.
    This time I don’t bother with words; the ones we need don’t exist in the English language. Even the syllable grief feels like a cliff, and we’ve fallen.
----
    —
    I FIND AVA CAMPANELLO’S phone number in the PTO directory of the high school, a PDF I filed in a saved folder on my computer without ever looking at it. I have talked to her only twice: once after an orchestra concert where Lily was featured performing a stunning cello piece, and once when she came to pick Lily up from our house to go to a dentist’s appointment. Both were polite, friendlyconversations—people who do not know each other and yet are linked by circumstance. It made me think of how, when you pull a frame from a hive, bees create a chain across the space: me, then Asher, then Lily, then Ava.
    I am not surprised when she doesn’t answer. She must have…people. Friends or relatives…someone who is with her at this moment. And yet, I vaguely remember Asher saying something about the father being out of the picture, and I know Lily was an only child.
    I hope she has people.
    “Ava,” I say, to the blank space of voicemail, “this is Olivia McAfee. Asher’s mom. I just…I wanted…” I close my eyes. “My God. I am so sorry.”
    I hang up as a tsunami of sadness sinks me into a kitchen chair. You read about tragedies in the paper, where a student athlete falls dead in the middle of a basketball game or a National Honor student is killed by a drunk driver or a school shooting claims the life of a preteen. In the news you see their faces, braces and cowlicks and freckles.
    You tell yourself this wouldn’t happen in your hometown.
    You tell yourself this isn’t anyone you know.
    Until it does, and it is.
----
    —
    IN THE MIDDLE of the night I hear it—a note like an oboe, vibrating in the heart of the house. I bolt upright in bed, thinking of the bear that decimated my hive, and then the rest of the day fills in the empty spaces in my conscious mind. Reality hits like a fist.
    The floor is cold on my bare feet as I follow the thread of sound. I know I am headed to Asher’s room, and I throw the door open to find my son curled on his side, sobbing uncontrollably. “Ash,” I cry, gripping his shoulder. “Baby, I’m here.”
    It doesn’t stop, this waterfall of pain. It comes pouring out of him from a source that refills as quickly as it is emptied. I touch his arm, his face, his hair, trying to soothe. With a little jolt I realize that Asher is sound asleep.
    Imagine a sorrow so deep that it batters the hatches of sleep; imagine drowning before you even realize you’ve gone under.
    I don’t know what to do. So I curl around him the way I used to when he was little and had a nightmare. Except now, he is bigger than I am, and I’m more like a barnacle than a protective cloak. I whisper in his ear, lines that used to slow his pulse, calm his heart.
    The owl and the pussy-cat went to sea
    In a beautiful pea-green boat,
    They took some honey, and plenty of money,
    Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
    I repeat this, letting it pull at him like a current, until I fall asleep.
----
    —
    THE NEXT MORNING—SATURDAY—I am awakened by the buzzing of Asher’s phone. I gingerly sit