Chapter 1: The Bones on the Plate
Nia was seven, and she had learned that the safest way to sit at that table was to keep her hands in her lap and her eyes on the plate in front of her.
The dining room was warm that evening.
Lamplight spread across the polished table, a platter of fried chicken sat in the center of it, and the room smelled of herbs and hot oil.
Nothing in the room had any lettering on it.
Vivian, thirty-five, long-faced, her hair pinned up, in a cream blouse, sat at one end with a chicken leg in her hand and a full plate in front of her.
At the other end sat Nia, round-faced, her hair in two small puffs, in a plain yellow dress.
Her plate was empty.
Her eyes were red, and her cheeks were clean.
Vivian pushed a small plate across the table toward her.
On it lay a few clean chicken bones.
She tilted her head, and her voice was light.
"Hungry?
Here.
That's all you get."
Nia did not touch it.
She looked at the table.
The front door opened, and Marcus came in, forty, square-jawed, in a dark jacket, a paper grocery bag in one arm.
He stopped at the edge of the dining room.
His eyes moved from the full plate to the empty one to the little plate of bones.
He set the bag down on a chair.
"Is that what you give my daughter?"
Vivian shrugged and did not look up from her chicken.
"She already ate.
She wants attention."
Marcus crossed the room and crouched beside his daughter's chair until his eyes were level with hers.
His voice dropped and softened.
"Did you eat?"
Nia lifted her eyes to him, small and careful.
"Only when you're home."
Marcus went still.
"What?"
Behind him, Vivian turned her face toward the window.
---
What happens when Marcus finally sees what has been happening to Nia behind closed doors?
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