Elodie thinks of her parents, puffy eggplant pouches beneath their eyes and faces like sallow butter. When Elodie would talk, they would simply leave the room.
She sips her tea, though her throat has closed up. “We’re not close.”
They finish the tea, and Ava drifts after Elodie toward their cars. Poppy chirps happily in her arms, and Elodie tries not to think of how difficult and overtired Jude always is in the afternoons, how if she’d brought him, there’d be juice stains and cake crumbs on his clothes, and he’d probably wrench free of her hand to bolt into the parking lot while she had a heart attack and ran after him.
Two wicker baskets of newborn swaddles and onesies sit in Ava’s trunk, and they switch them to Elodie’s back seat. A loan, not a gift. Ava has baby fever like nothing else, and the way she looks at the slight rise in Elodie’s coat is hungry, as if she wants to be the one to hover between Elodie’s legs in the hospital and snatch the baby as soon as it slithers out.
Ava lingers, Poppy on her hip, as Elodie slides into her car.
“I wanted to mention something,” Ava says.
It takes effort for Elodie to keep her face neutral, to not let any tiredness or anxiety show. Every time she’s around Bren’s family, she’s waiting for their judgment to be delivered knife-sharp with a sweet smile, because they will always be polite, but she knows what they’re thinking.
She tricked him into this.
Look how fast she got herself pregnant.
What iswrongwith her first child?
Slut.
Gold digger.
Bad mother.
There is no doubt that his family hates her, hates how she is a dark stain on their golden boy, hates how he left the country to visit a girl and came back with a pregnant wife.
“I think it’s helpful to be on the same page as your husband when starting a family.” Ava tucks a wisp of hair behind her ear, not quite making eye contact. “Early learning programs, sleep routines, weaning, and… well, discipline. Brendan is—” She pauses, restarts like a car with an engine frosted over during the night. “He likes to fix things.”
Elodie digs the car keys into the edge of her thumbnail. It’s oddly hesitant, the way Ava is talking about Bren, when usually all she does is gush about him.
“So…” Ava says. “Oliver and I agreed we won’t spank Poppy. I personally believe it’s so detrimental to children’s development, and they only act out because their needs aren’t being met or they don’t have the skills to manage big emotions. I would just… make sure you both agree on how you’ll handle difficult situations.”
“He’s besotted with the idea of being a father,” Elodie says. “I’ve never seen him lose his cool for anything, and I hardly think he’ll want to hit a baby.” She means for it to sound reassuring.
But there’s something odd about Ava’s smile, a stretching that makes skin seem too tight against bone. “Oh. I’m not talking about the baby.”
A splinter of unease tugs deep in Elodie’s gut, and she has the sudden urge to slam her car door and peel out of there before Ava can say anything else. Today has already been too much, and Elodie doesn’t need new worries gnawing at her.
“I know Jude has some struggles.” Ava sounds like she’s picking each word with excruciating care. “Not that it’s anything to worry about. Children are all special in their own ways.”
Oh, Elodie is going to havewordswith her husband over what the hell he’s been saying to his sister about Jude.
“He told you exactly how our parents passed away, didn’t he?” Ava adjusts Poppy on her hip and then looks away to hide the ache in her eyes. “Bren was there. He saw everything. It really affected him. I mean, how could it not? He loved our parents so, so much, and maybe they were a little strict, but they cherished us both. He’s come so far from being the traumatized little boy he once was, but I know his biggest dream is to follow in our parents’ footsteps. We were both brought up to be very polite, very neat, very… respectful. I’m sure he’ll want that for his own children.”
It takes everything in Elodie not to snap,Good thing Jude isn’t his, then. Instead, she keeps her smile thin as she says, “I’m sure he’ll be the perfect father to our child.” She maybe leans too much on the singularchild, but Ava only nods in relief, as if whatever cryptic undercurrent she was trying to relay has been successfully delivered.
Elodie just feels exhausted and annoyed. There is no changing Jude; there is only surviving until he outgrows the meltdowns. Bren has never indicated he’ll overstep and meddle with the way she parents her own son, and if he ever tried to spank Jude, she simply wouldn’t let him.
Bren will listen; he adores her.
She isn’t worried.
FIVE
The sky looks like thebruised flesh of a persimmon as she pulls into the nearly empty school parking lot. A swift, brittle pain slices through her chest with each hurried step through the gates, as if she has swallowed sewing needles and scissors and they are working hard to vivisect her from the inside out.
It had felt good, for the last few hours, to procrastinate picking up Jude, to buy groceries without him as a ticking time bomb in the cart, and then wander through a bookstore without rushing. Everything is bought with a swipe of Bren’s card, and though he’s told her to get whatever she wants whenever she wants it, she’s careful. A good wife is frugal. A good wife buys only things that benefit her husband as well. Stopping by the bookstore, she could argue, was not for her but for the baby. She stood absently flipping through parenting books until another pregnant mother looked over and said with a smile, “Your first?”
