Picking Up the Pieces
When Ryan and Nan finally do go home that night, he crashes and sleeps until ten o’clock the next morning.
When he appears in the kitchen at last, groggy and sleepy-eyed, the tiled floor has been scrubbed clean, and Nan is looking through a furniture catalogue.
“I can’t get the blood out of the tabletop,” she says, gesturing at the rusty stain on the wood. “It’ll have to go. I’m not having a bloodied table in my house.”
Ryan flinches.
“Ryan,” Nan says, tucking away the catalogue. “I think you and I need to talk.”
And Ryan knows that this is it.
He sinks into the kitchen chair opposite hers. The table has never seemed so wide before, nor the gleaming counter-tops so hostile. And Nan is unreadable, her hands comfortable and loose around the cup of tea in her palm
