“I didn’t know he had a wife.” She played with a loose thread on the comforter. “Did he cheat on her like Dad cheated on you?”

“No! Their divorce was nothing like your dad’s and mine. They just sort of . . . grew apart.”

“When?”

“I think earlier this year.”

She took that in. “So you’re not dating him?”

“No, Whitney. I’m not dating him. We’re just friends.” In the back of my mind, I could still hear my words hanging in the air . . . You lied to me. You hid this from me. I wish you would have come to me and just been honest.

But I wasn’t lying to her, was I? I wasn’t dating Henry. Dating was when you went places together, like movies or restaurants or concerts. Henry and I stuck to hallways and bathtubs and subterranean offices. Those were definitely not dates. They were two people helping one another through a hard time, making life a little less lonely, reassuring each other that their deepest insecurities weren’t the truth.

But as I hugged Whitney goodnight and left her room, a knot began forming in my stomach.

The knot continued to tighten, growing ever more complicated while I loaded the mugs in the dishwasher, said goodnight to my parents, and coaxed Keaton up to bed. After he’d put his pajamas on and brushed his teeth, I turned off his light and went and sat on the edge of his bed.

“Did you have fun tonight?” I asked, brushing his hair off his face.

“Yeah. Mr. DeSantis is cool. Can I really go to his boxing gym?”

“Sure.” I glanced at the nightstand, which I’d emptied the other night without saying anything to Keaton. If I opened it right now, what would I find? “I think some physical activity will be good for you. Especially after the holidays. We’re all eating so much junk food.”

He didn’t say anything.

I forced myself to be brave. “It’s been really hard, hasn’t it, this first Christmas without your dad. It feels strange.”

“Yeah.”

“Sometimes when things feel hard or strange, we do things to try to make ourselves feel better, like eat cookies or chips. But it doesn’t really work, because we can’t . . . eat away our bad feelings.”

“Do you do that? Eat when you feel bad?”

“Sometimes.”

“Like when?”

“Like when I’m sad.”

He paused. “I do it when I’m mad at Dad.”

Relieved that it was finally out, I took a deep breath and continued stroking his hair. “I understand.”

“But it doesn’t help.”

My throat got tight, and I swallowed hard. “No, it doesn’t, does it? But you know what?”

“What?”

“I bet boxing will. And when you start school, making new friends will. And I’m definitely going to need your helping picking out a house.”

“And a dog?” he asked hopefully.