Bren looks stricken, his eyes burning with panic as he cups her cold hands. “Fuck the car, we need to get you warm.”
He digs keys from his pocket and wrangles the front doorknob, swearing when it sticks, and for an agonized, drawn-out second, Elodie thinks it won’t open. The house doesn’twantit to open. She surely has lost her mind to the cold if she’s thinking that, but the thought has her brain in a vicious pincer grip, and she can’t shake it. Then the door gives and Bren drags her inside, hitting every light switch he can find as his agitation bleeds out in staccato steps. He thuds the front door closed and then unbuttons her coat, pulling her against him as if he, alone, can thaw her. She has never seen him this anxious, this upset.
“You need a hot shower. And soup. Or maybe tea is faster. No, no, I’ll heat up soup. Fuck, do we go to the hospital?” He slides his hands across her belly, but his touch is stiff and jittery.
She can’t shake the muddled fog wrapped over her brain, the disconnect between limbs and fingers. She stands wooden as he removes her shoes and kisses her cold palms and tells her everything will be all right.
“I have to find Jude.” Her voice has begun to thaw, a curl of irritation creeping in.
“I’ll deal with him. Let’s get you warm.”
Deal with him.
She imagines a hand coming down, a strike.He likes to fix things.
“I should.” But she feels slow, unable to protest as Bren kisses her temple and then takes the stairs two at a time, a bullish authority to his voice as he shouts, “Jude!”
She follows, dragging herself up the stairs on numb legs while worry roars to life in a tidal wave up her throat at how Jude’s been alone and unsupervised for hours. If he’s hurt— But she can’t spiral into preemptive terror. She forces herself to hurry down the hall toward the nursery, where Bren has flung open the door.
Relief and frustration hit at the same time when she looks in. Relief, because Jude has spent the evening in his room, safe, playing with his toys. Frustration because he was up here lining up rows of wooden animals from the vintage Noah’s ark while she stood outside and froze. Hours of uninterrupted play? He clearly had the time of his life.
He squats in the middle of the nursery, paint-soaked clothes discarded, wearing only underwear and thermal shirt. Free and calm and unbothered.
Bren wrenches off his tie and looks rumpled and worked up, the most annoyed she’s ever seen him. “Jude, youdo nottreat your mother like this.”
Jude hasn’t glanced at either of them, busy setting out miniature teacups. He doesn’t care.
Bren grabs his arm and bodily lifts him away from his game and Elodie feels Jude’s scream of riotous rage burgeoning before it leaves his mouth. He screams and strikes out but Bren holds on hard.
“You’re in big trouble, young man,” Bren snaps.
“Let me talk to him,” Elodie says.
Bren tries to stand Jude up, but he’s gone boneless, all rubbery limbs, his shrieks rising toward the kind of meltdown Elodie doesn’t have the energy to manage.
“I think I should—” she starts, but Bren waves her off in a way that spikes something ugly and sharp in her chest.
“You’re going to time-out.” Bren flicks a glance at Elodie over Jude’s head. “We need to be a united front, okay? Go have a hot shower. I’ve got this.”
You do not, she wants to snarl, and it takes a herculean effort to push the unsteady rage back down. She shouldn’t feel like this. So far, Bren has been tentative with how much he interacts with Jude, careful to let Elodie take the lead and wait for permission before attempting goofy theatrics to amuse her son. It doesn’t help that Jude wants nothing to do with him or that Elodie doesn’t push for interaction between them. She should encourage their connection, sheneedsto, but it strikes something ugly inside her, a festering, rotten fear that someday her son might like Bren. When he doesn’t like her.
But this is the perfect chance to let Bren practice at playing father, deal with the mess, the discipline, while she is allowed to retreat. She should be weightless with relief that she doesn’t have to hold Jude as he thrashes and screams and scratches. Bren is so much stronger as he pins Jude’s wrists with one hand and demands an explanation on why he locked his mother out.
“I didn’t!” Jude shrieks. “I didn’t lock it!”
“No more lying.” Bren’s jaw is tight as he snaps his fingers hard in Jude’s face. “You’re in big trouble for treating your mother so badly. You see this? She doesn’t even want to be with you because you’re so naughty.”
The urge to snatch Jude out of his arms is an inverted screamtrapped in her throat, but somehow she manages to force herself out of the nursery and ignore the hysterical screams of “Mama!Mama!” slamming like bricks into the brittle bones of her spine. He sounds hysterical, in pain.What if Bren hits—No, he won’t. He said time-out. Jude needs consequences or he’s never going to understand.
It takes a conscious effort to walk away, to ignore the twisted knives digging into her heart that sayYou barely know this man and you definitely don’t know what he’s like when he’s angry.
She has never seen Bren angry. Their life is perfect.
She runs a bath in the master bedroom’s en suite, making the water hot,hot, and then sliding in with a gasp of relief. Maybe the water is too hot. This is bad for the baby, isn’t it? She sinks down to her chin, her eyes closed, imagining the baby thawing like a nub of raw chicken pried from the depth of the freezer. From deep in the house, faint wails sound, and she has to forcibly loosen the tension in her shoulder, her neck, her spine.
Steam seeps into her lungs.
She breathes out.
