wet her lips. “How do you know that?”
“Uncle Luca came back. I heard Papa say he was lying. There was a lot of yelling.”
“You call him your uncle?”
Cross lifted one shoulder covered by a leather jacket that looked strikingly like one his father would have worn years ago. The children’s Doc Martens on his feet matched the whole vibe. The one thing he didn’t have was the slicked-back hair, but the wild strands of his black hair looked better all crazy anyway.
“He’s my godfather, too,” Luca added. “So ...”
Penny knew.
“And you’re supposed to be my godmother.”
“Yeah, I am,” she admitted quietly.
“Supposed to be,” the boy said again, “because you’re not here. You never were. And even though everybody else knows you, I don’t.”
“You knew me. Just for a short time.”
That didn’t satisfy the boy at all.
“Yeah, well. Not the same.” He sighed hard, glancing through the trees at his house when he said, “I like it out here. I’m not supposed to go past the trees, but ... well, I do what I want.”
Penny laughed under her breath. “We all do.”
“Not like me.”
What did that mean?
“You’re smart, aren’t you?” she asked.
Cross pressed his lips together as he considered that before saying, “Yeah, but not like my papa. Different.”
“How?”
“He’s ... smart-smart, you know? Numbers, and books, and things. All the things. Universe stuff. I see people and just know.”
Penny’s brow dipped. “Know what?”
Cross looked back her way, those soul-deep brown eyes of his piercing and apprehensive and knowing when he replied, “Well, everything, Penny.”
She thought ... no way.
“Really?”
The boy smiled half-heartedly, saying, “It’s a lot sometimes. People lie, I know. When people hurt, I see it. Ma says it makes me special. Papa says ... it is what it is.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think you ask about me because you don’t want me to ask about you.”
And just like that, Penny knew he was telling her the truth.
“I should go,” Penny said, pushing up from the ground and brushing the dirt from her backside at the same time.
Cross glanced her way, frowning openly. “Remember when I said I didn’t know you?”
“Yeah.”
“I did know enough about you. I know you must have loved me before you left and made my ma and papa sad, right? Because you made me something to keep—something I would always have.” Cross shuffled his feet against the dry ground, kicking up some dirt and dead leaves in the process when he muttered, “I mean, nobody makes a song for someone else just because.”
Some did.
Not Penny.
“Of course, I loved you.”
Dark eyes of a five-and-a-half-year-old lifted to meet hers when he asked, “Then why did you leave?” Cross tipped his chin higher, that sharp gaze of his looking Penny up and down without pause. Considering, she knew. Considering her. Waiting to find her lie. Like maybe he could sense it before it even passed her lips. Could he? “I’m little, even though I don’t like it, but they know I’m not little, too, in some ways. So they’re careful when they talk. But they still do or I still hear it. You were with my parents for more than a year. You said you loved me—they loved you, I know. And then you left. Why?”
If only Penny dared to close her eyes, she imagined that she could pretend this was a conversation between two adults. Certainly not one between a grown woman and a five-year-old boy. It was a strange thing to hear wisdom in the voice of a child. She had to wonder if that was how people felt talking to her as a child that had seen and knew things that were far beyond her comprehension.
“That’s not an easy answer,” Penny replied in a whisper.
“The truth is always easy,” Cross replied, folding his leather-clad arms over his small chest. There was something to be said about being stared down by a child. Especially when it felt like that child was also judging you. “Because people lie—all the time. Everyone does it. But they always have to think about it, make sure it sounds right ... it’s a choice to lie. Like Uncle Luca says, shit’s a process.”
Penny coughed out a laugh alongside muttering, “He says what?”
Cross rolled his eyes. “He says a lot of stuff. That one is right, though. The truth just is. Telling it sometimes hurts, or changes things, but it is still the truth. Right?”
“You see things in a very black and white way, don’t you?”
“Kind of.”
“Is it easier that way?” she asked.