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. “Easier to understand why you get to be this way ... and everyone else is the way they are, too?”
Honestly curious, she waited for his reply.
The little boy blinked, surprise darting over his young face for a split second. “No one’s ever asked me that before.”
“No?”
“No.”
Penny shoved her hands into the pockets of her black windbreaker, telling him, “Maybe because they don’t know how—they can’t understand anyway.”
“Maybe. And it’s not easy. It just is.”
Penny didn’t point out how he said the same thing about the truth. Whether he knew it or not, yes, he did deal with his strange uniqueness in a yes or no, black or white manner because it was easier for him than delving deeper.
It showed his youth. Possibly one of the few things that did. What he lacked in actual age and experience, he simplified things down to just being.
Cross lifted his brow and smiled, a flash of arrogance showing in the action that almost had her laughing when he added, “But you still didn’t tell me why, and I didn’t forget.”
Smart kid.
In a lot of damn ways.
“Because I had to,” she said, knowing all too well it wouldn’t satisfy him, but it also wasn’t a lie. “I left because I had to.”
“That’s ...” Cross’s brow furrowed. “Well, why?”
“Because it was the right thing to do. The only thing I could do.”
“Do what, though?”
“Leave,” she replied.
Cross let out a huff, gaze narrowing in on her again with a new gleam. “I know what you’re doing.”
Penny grinned. “Yeah?”
“Saying the truth.”
“But?”
“Without details,” he said, defeated.
She only shrugged.
Fair was fair.
Her godson might have card tricks of his own—although being able to read people at his age was way more amazing than just a card trick—but she had a few, too.
Cross shook his head. “Uncle Luca told them you were different.”
That made her pause.
All over.
Penny turned to stone at just the mere mention of Luca. She had been content to come back to this place, say goodbye and hope, and then leave it all behind if that’s what came of her choices. She’d forced herself to stop thinking about the people she kept leaving behind, too. Sacrifices had to be made, after all.
That didn’t stop it from hurting.
Cross observed her in silent stillness, waiting for a reply from her that wouldn’t come. It couldn’t. “He likes you a lot, too.”
Penny’s throat flexed when she managed to ask, “What?”
“Uncle Luca. When people miss things—things that mean something—their eyes change. More distant. Like they’re looking at something far away. Something I can’t see. You did what he did when he told them he found you. But you did it now because I talked about him. See, same thing.”
This kid was ... something else.
She also couldn’t afford to stand there and keep talking to him even though every single molecule in her being wanted to do exactly that. He was amazing. It took a single conversation with the kid to realize just how much she had missed out on where he was concerned.
“I really should go,” Penny said, moving a step deeper into the forest. The same way she had come.
The shout from behind her made her next step hesitate.
“Cross! Get back to the house, son! Time to eat!”
Penny’s head snapped to the side, gaze darting over her shoulder through the trees to find the form of a man coming to stand on the rear porch of the three-level home. Like his son, she hadn’t laid eyes on Nazio in as many years.
Not much had changed.
He was older, yes, but his playful grin as he called for his child still felt like a welcomed sight to her.
“Cross!” he called again.
The little boy just a few feet away looked her way with a shrug. “You’re gonna leave now, huh?”
“I have to.”
He nodded once. “Yeah, you keep doing that to people, I guess. Leaving.”