Say No More by Gemini Sasson

covering her mouth, as if to dam back words better left unsaid. The other hand drifted downward to touch her stomach. It was something she’d been doing a lot this past week. I didn’t understand why until she spoke again.
    “Thank God this baby will still have a big brother to look up to.” There was a steeliness to her voice. She was trying to be strong, even though inside she was dissolving like a chalk drawing in a downpour. By the way Estelle’s mouth drooped heavily, I could tell there was also an edge of blame in Lise’s words.
    “You mean you’re —?”
    “I am. Just two months.” Lise lifted her chin, shoring up her resolve. “So you know, my mom invited me to come live with her. I told her ‘no’ at first, but I think maybe I should. Hunter doesn’t need to be reminded of what happened. He needs to stay safe, where someone can keep an eye on him.” Lise glanced at Estelle, who was still staring at the snotty tissue balled up in her fist. “You don’t know how hard a decision this is for me. My mom needs me. Hunter ... and the baby, they’ll be looked after there.”
    Estelle raised her face. “I can look after them.”
    “Obviously you can’t. You knew Hunter wasn’t supposed to be around running machinery after what happened to the Hiddleson’s little girl last year. We discussed it. You both promised Cam that you —”
    “So you’re going to take Hunter away from his home? From me? Because of something that didn’t happen.”
    Lise didn’t answer right away. She let that silence stretch between them, making it all the more potent. “Because of something that very nearly did.”
    Estelle turned her face away. Fury brewed beneath her shroud of grief. “And the dogs? The sheep? What about them?”
    “You know I can’t ...” Lise expelled a weighty sigh, then twitched her shoulders in a shrug. “I’ll figure it out.”
    That was when I noticed Hunter standing in the doorway to the kitchen, the fingers of one hand covering his heart, his favorite stuffed animal clutched in the other arm. Bernard the Bear is what he named it after Cam brought it home from a trip to San Diego once. Hunter had slept with it every night since. Today Hunter had on a dark gray suit, complete with a little black tie. He looked like a tiny adult — except for the bare feet.
    In the four days since his daddy had died in the accident, Hunter hadn’t said a single word. Not even so much as a grunt. In fact, he didn’t respond at all when people spoke to him. As if he didn’t hear them. I’d often noticed him rubbing a hand over his chest, like he was soothing an ache in his heart.
    Hunter drifted across the kitchen, which seemed a vast distance, it took him so long. He sank down next to me, wrapped his spindly arms around my neck, and hugged me hard, crushing Bernard between us. I licked his face once, then tucked my muzzle against his shoulder.
    It turned out it was the day of Cam and Ray’s funeral. I was not allowed to go, which made me sad, because Lise had said something about saying goodbye to Cam, right before she dissolved in tears. I had wanted to see him one more time, too. Now, all I had left of him was his scent. I stole an old T-shirt of his from behind the laundry hamper, ran out the door with it later that week, and buried it behind the bushes in the dog yard. Just so I’d always have something to remember him by.
    I used to think Cam would always be with us. Never assumed my world would be anything different than what it was those first few months.
    How quickly everything can change.

chapter 5
    E verything started off like normal that day. Although ‘normal’ wasn’t really normal anymore. Nothing had been the same in the weeks since Cam died.
    Lise floated through life as if she were a body without a spirit, trapped in a place she couldn’t get out of. She didn’t go back to her teaching job. Told her mother, Becky, over the phone that she couldn’t sit in front of all those kids