This is the writer's voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Triesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The writer's voice, we'll hear Camille Bordas,

read her story, one son only, from the March 7th, 2022 issue of the magazine.

Bordas published two novels in France.

Her first novel in English, How to Behave in a Crowd, came out in 2017.

Now here's Camille Bordas.

One son only.

This is not a rewrite of that story in which plants and animals and people keep

pointing up dead over the course of a school year, but it starts the same

and it feels odd not to acknowledge, so I will.

I just did. Things kept dying.

My father first, in June, then the puppy my ex-wife had adopted

to help the children get over their grandpa, and then the school janitor, Lane.

Right after Halloween, Lane had died during lunchtime in the cafeteria,

in front of the kids, heart attack.

A few weeks later, my son, Ernest, came home from school and told me that he

hoped there was no afterlife.

I hope there's no afterlife, he said.

We were in the living room, looking through the window, waiting to see if

the rain would turn to snow.

I hope he's not watching over me.

...