She gets him washed up, the smock folded away, all the while wondering if the Popsicle house will make it to the car before collapsing. Jude holds up a stick figure he’s twisted from pipe cleaners so she can see.
“That’s cute,” Elodie says.
“Me,” he says. “I live in this house now. Not in your bad, bad house.”
She slings his backpack over her shoulder and picks up the Popsicle monstrosity with tentative care, her fingers already sticky from the wet paint. She’s about to usher him toward the door when he adds, “That’s you.”
He’s pointing at the floor.
A wad of mangled pipe cleaners lies on the linoleum, the shape of a body barely detectable because it’s been rolled into a ball. As she watches, he stomps on it with all his fierce, tiny might.
She doesn’t know what to say. No one else noticed; no one would pick up on the significance. When he stares up at her, there’s a defiant set to his dimpled chin.
She snatches his hand and marches for the door, tightening her grip on the little house until the walls slouch. When he starts to whimper, she knows she’s being too rough, but she doesn’t relent until they are in the parking lot.
The car locks flash and she yanks open his door. “Hop in.” The edge in her voice holds the slice of an uncut glacier. She is not gentle as she buckles him and slams his little house on his lap.
When she slides into the driver’s seat, she doesn’t start the engine immediately. They sit in the cold and quiet, the car park darkening around them, and when she glances in the rearview mirror, he sits there clutching his house and glaring at her back.
What is she meant to do? Tell him off and receive an uninterested stare back? First he loses Bren’s tools, now this. He wants her to know what he thinks of Bren, of her, of their new life.
“Chocolate?” he says, and her resolve cracks.
She’s trying so hard. She’s giving himeverything. She will never understand him, not even if she took a box cutter to his chest and opened him up to see what is so verywrongwith her child.
Heat smarts behind her eyes and she thumbs them quickly, putting the car into gear and telling herself it’s hormones, justhormones, because she is used to him not loving her when that’s what she wants most.
She loves him with such wretched intensity, it leaves holes in her lungs.
When they pull into the driveway, the house grows before them, formless in the melting dark. No lights peek from the windows and Bren’s SUV hasn’t returned. There is something toothy about the way the house watches her climb from the sedan, as if it’s been waiting for fresh meat to step into the molasses void of its mouth and be swallowed. Theirs is the last on the road, the asphalt petering to gravel before thick woods grow out of the gloom. The rest of the street is cast in a rosy glow, refurbished Victorians and newer brick cottages lit up with an inviting warmth that speaks of families crowded around dining tables to swap tales about their picturesque days.
Bren’s house looks harrowed, pulled straight from a haunting.
She slams her door and walks around to unbuckle Jude, but when she pops open his door, a cold wave of dismay washes over her.
Paint has been spilled all over the back seat, smeared sticky and fresh on Jude’s trousers and puddling between his legs. Even in the dim car light, the red is brilliant and vivid and unforgiving, glinting as if it is tipped from the throat of a slaughtered animal. It isn’t possible.The little house couldn’t have leaked this much—and then she sees the bottle of watery paint in Jude’s hand. He must have stolen it when she wasn’t watching.
“I was finishing it.” His voice pitches high, anxious. “I was just finishing it.”
She can’t move. Red fingerprints cover the car door and paint pools on the lush upholstery. His clothes are ruined. The car is…
“I don’t like your house.” His bottom lip trembles. “I likemynew house. I was finishing—”
“Juststop.” She wrenches his seat belt off and jerks him out of the car, nearly clipping his head on the roof and doing nothing to prevent the soggy house being squashed in his grasp. She slams the car door with such force he begins to cry, but she’s already wrenched the creation from his grasp and stormed around the side of the house, car keys clinking in her other hand.
A twisted, static feeling roars behind her eyes as she reaches the trash bins propped against the wall, waiting for Bren to lug them to the curb for collection. She plucks off the lid and flings the Popsicle house inside.
Judescreams.
He flies at her, his fists clenched as he beats at her arms. She grabs him by the shoulders.
“Stop it.” The words cut from her mouth, shrill and unsteady. “Do you want me to tell Bren how—howbadyou’re being?”
It’s a hollow threat to make when neither of them knows where it leads, but he’s landed a good punch to her shoulder and it throbs, her muscles screaming as she struggles to hold on to his thrashing body. A glance at their closest neighbor shows a porch light has flicked on, a curtain fluttering. Jude keeps screaming, his feet grown into the dirt, his spine arching backward like a bow bent as he wrestles in her grip. He will split the sky open with his noise, he will pull a storm down anddrown them, and everyone will look and see how poorly she is handling this. They will ask how she possibly deserves a new child when the first is so wild and feral and unmanageable.
“You’ve destroyed his car,” she snaps. “You’re— Jude,stop hitting me.”
“I just wanted to f-f-finish!” He’s hysterical, tears streaking down his cheeks.
