“I’d fight against the totalitarian regime taking over my country?”

Mom rolls her eyes, like I’m just being difficult, which I sort of am. “Maybe a different kind of book.”

She’s right, I know what I need to do. And just like at the start of summer, I have nothing left to lose. I’ve come full circle. Just not in the good way.

Chapter

Twenty

AIDEN

I liked family dinner better when I wasn’t the only entertainment. When I was in middle school, Chelsea and Maddie were in high school, and dinner conversations mostly covered grilling my sisters about their lives. As a middle schooler, I loved hearing Mom and Dad ask them a million questions—how they felt about their upcoming basketball games, which colleges they’d visit. Now that it’s just me, with no form of distraction, it’s not quite so appealing.

As I fill glasses with ice water and set them on the table, Mom is pulling a pan of chicken out of the oven and asking Dad a full lineup of questions about the next phase of construction on The Annex. I steal a roll from the straw basket my mom has used since I was little, and shove a chunk of it in my mouth before setting the basket on the table and sinking down into my seat.

“Saw that,” Mom mutters, and I don’t even pretend that I didn’t do it. The day I stop eating my mom’s food is the day I find her balled up in a corner somewhere, weeping about where she went wrong.

Mom brings the metal baking pan into the dining room, her hands wrapped in rolled-up towels. This chicken is my favorite. Second only to last week’s dinner. Ever since my appointment with Dr. Shah, Wednesday night meals have been a medley of my favorites. She’s setting the pan down on the table when the doorbell rings.

“John,” she yells into the kitchen, where my dad is holding a bowl of green beans.

“On it.” He turns for the door and my mom takes her seat across from me. When it was all five of us at the table, Mom and Dad sat on opposite ends, like a king and queen, but now that it’s just the three of us, we all sit at one end.

Dad is saying something I can’t understand, then there’s a slam of the door and he’s back in the dining room with his bowl of beans … and Olivia.

“Look who I found,” he says cheerfully before setting the bowl on the table.