CHAPTER 8 — The Child Who Did Not Smile
POV: Noah Vale (limited, observational)
Noah learned early that grown-ups smiled differently when cameras were present.
Those smiles were wider. Slower. They stayed in place even when nothing was funny.
He stood on the courthouse steps with his hand in his father's, the stone beneath his shoes warm from the sun. The building behind them was tall and serious, like his father's voice when he spoke in court.
Marissa stood on Adrian's other side.
She looked like she belonged there. Her dress was the right color. Her hair didn't move in the wind. When people called her name, she turned smoothly, smiling as if she had practiced it in a mirror.
The cameras liked her.
They liked Adrian too, but differently. People didn't shout his name. They waited for him to look first. When he didn't, they waited anyway.
Noah watched Marissa's smile carefully.
It never changed.
She looked at the cameras. At the reporters. At the space where a future was supposed to be.
She did not look down.
Adrian did.
Not once. Many times.
His hand adjusted around Noah's—never tighter, never looser. Just there. Checking. Counting. Making sure.
Noah did not smile.
A woman near the front waved at him. "Aren't you happy?" she asked, her voice too sweet.
Noah didn't answer.
He wasn't sad. He wasn't scared. He just felt smaller, as if the space beside Marissa was colder than the space beside his father, even though they stood in the same sunlight.
The questions ended. The cameras lowered. The crowd loosened and drifted away.
As they walked toward the car, Marissa stayed half a step behind Adrian. She did not reach for Noah. She did not speak to him. When people congratulated her, she laughed lightly, her attention never dropping to where Noah walked.
Adrian's hand never left his.
That night, after the apartment quieted, Noah sat on the edge of his bed and waited. Waiting was easier than asking.
Adrian came in a few minutes later.
"She doesn't like me," Noah said.
The words were soft. Flat. Not angry. Just true.
Adrian did not correct him.
"I know," he said.
No excuses. No explanations.
Just truth.
"You don't have to like her either," Adrian added.
Noah nodded. Acceptance came easily to him. He had learned early what did not move when pushed.
Marissa did not stay long.
She arrived with one suitcase and left it by the door, as if reminding everyone—including herself—that this was temporary. A visit. One week arranged neatly between obligations.
Noah noticed the suitcase first.
Temporary things behaved differently.
Nothing in the apartment changed. No drawers were claimed. No pictures moved. Marissa's belongings stayed zipped, contained, careful not to spill into space that wasn't hers.
Every morning, she prepared to leave with precise movements. Shoes aligned. Hair perfect. Smile practiced in the mirror—not for him, Noah realized, but for whoever waited outside.
She spoke to him politely.
"Good morning, Noah."
"How was school?"
Her voice never bent. Never softened.
Adrian always walked Noah to the door instead.
On the third day, a photographer came. Casual lunch, they called it. Casual smiles that would later be framed as certainty.
Marissa stood close to Adrian.
Cameras clicked.
She smiled easily then—bright, flawless.
Noah stood slightly apart.
When the photographer asked him to step closer, Adrian placed a hand on his shoulder first. Noah leaned into the familiar pressure, his fingers curling into Adrian's jacket.
Marissa adjusted her posture.
Not her attention.
That was when Noah understood.
Not painfully. Not dramatically.
Just clearly.
During the week Marissa stayed, Noah learned the difference between noise and presence.
The apartment was quieter when she was there, even though there were more sounds. Her heels on the floor. The low murmur of her phone calls. The soft click of doors closing carefully behind her. Everything she did was gentle, measured, as if she were visiting a museum instead of a home.
She never entered Noah's room.
Not once.
Noah noticed because Adrian always did.
Every evening, Adrian checked Noah's homework at the dining table, correcting mistakes with a calm voice and a steady pen. Marissa sat nearby sometimes, scrolling through her phone or watching the news without sound. She never leaned over. Never asked what Noah was learning. Never commented on the drawings he left spread out beside his books.
When Noah finished, Adrian always said, "Good job."
Marissa said nothing.
Once, Noah brought his favorite book to the living room and sat on the rug, close enough to feel included but not close enough to interrupt. The book was about planets. He liked it because space made sense — things stayed where they were supposed to be.
Marissa glanced down briefly. Just once.
Her eyes passed over him the way they passed over furniture.
Noah lowered the book slowly.
It wasn't that she was unkind. That was what made it harder to explain. Unkindness had edges. It could be named. This was something else — a smooth absence, like a space left blank on purpose.
At dinner, Adrian always served Noah first.
Marissa noticed. Noah could tell she did. Her smile tightened slightly, then returned to normal. She did not comment. She did not object.
She simply accepted it.
Noah watched her carefully then.
He realized she accepted many things the same way — calmly, strategically, without warmth or resistance. Like someone agreeing to rules they believed they could bend later.
One evening, Adrian received a call and stepped into the study. The apartment shifted immediately. The air felt larger. Less anchored.
Marissa sat across from Noah at the table.
For a moment, they were alone.
She looked at him then. Really looked.
"You're very well-behaved," she said.
Noah nodded.
"That's good," she added. "Children should be."
Her smile returned.
It did not reach her eyes.
Noah didn't know what to say, so he said nothing. Silence had become familiar territory.
When Adrian returned, the space closed again. Noah's shoulders relaxed without him realizing they had tensed.
Later that night, Noah lay in bed and listened to voices through the walls — Marissa's light and pleasant, Adrian's low and controlled. He couldn't hear the words, only the difference between them.
One voice floated.
The other held the ground.
By the end of the week, Noah no longer wondered where he stood.
He knew.
At the end of the week, Marissa's suitcase was also gone.
So were the smiles.
What remained was something Noah carried quietly, without confusion or resentment:
Some people stood beside you for the world to see.
Others stood with you so you would never feel alone.
His father had chosen.
And Noah stayed where it was warm.