Just like that she could feel their already tenuous relationship begin to crack. This was one of those moments she’d heard about from her friends, when a lie was necessary to tell her children to spare them from the truth. And who knew what it might grow into in the future? If their father ever returned, Veronica would have to bear the consequences and tell them of how their mother had lied to them while Theo wanted to tell them all along. Her bottom lip quivered, but she tried to collect herself, and she wiped her nose with her sleeve. It wasn’t a dignified look, she knew, but there was no time to worry about cosmetic appearances. “We must.” She replied, her voice wobbling as she mustered all the strength she could to back her own words. “There is no other option, Theo.” This. She was good at this. Finding solutions to problems, problems that seemed at their core impossible to work around.

Well, Nathaniel had been the core of their family and now he was gone. So she had to adjust; had to search for a solution, however inelegant and bastardized it might be. “You know there isn’t.” Even behind the poorly assembled veneer of decisiveness, Veronica could feel her resolve withering away by the minute.