Relaxes.
It seems like forever until Bren comes in and kisses the top of her damp curls. He shucks out of his work clothes and throws them in the hamper, pulling on sweatpants before sitting on the edge of the tub and sliding his hand into the water to run over her naked belly.
A thorny, unwelcome annoyance flits across her jaw as she wonders if he cared she was cold, or if this is just about the risk to his baby. All he ever does is touch her stomach. She resists the urge to snarl at him to stop.
“You sure you’re okay?” He wears a mournful puppy-dog look, worried but attentive, and if she snapped her fingers he’d run and fetch whatever she wanted. Warm soup or a hot water bottle or maybe he’d bring her the entire sun to tuck into her pocket.
“I’m fine,” she says. “Where’s Jude?”
“Having time-out on the stairs. You gotta let me take the lead with him sometimes, okay?” he says. “He’s wearing you out and it’s not good for the baby. I’m not a total idiot about kids, you know. Maybe I’m not dad material yet, but I’m trying.”
“You are a great dad.” She reaches for his hand and presses it to her cheek, her voice softening and some of the pent-up agitation melting away. “I’m sorry. I’m glad you stepped in. I don’t know what to do about him.”
“All you have to do is let me help. You don’t have to do this all on your own. Especially when we have two.”
“It’s a boy, by the way.” She says it quietly, only looking at him from the corner of her eye, but the way his face lights up in sheer, undiluted delight makes something inside her icy chest melt.
“Oh my god.” He pulls her face toward him and kisses her, long and slow. “We’re having a boy!” He can’t stop grinning, foolish and adorable and pleased. “You have to tell me everything about the appointment, but first I better go see what he did to the car before I lose my fucking mind looking at you. You are so goddamn beautiful, Elodie January.”
She gives him a wan smile. “See if you still feel that way after you have to get the car reupholstered.”
Even with the lights on,there is an empty cold to the house as Elodie feels her way down the hall, one hand on the wallpaper as if she needs the support. With thermals under her sweatpants and an oversize hoodie of Bren’s, she has begun to feel warm in a real way, not the artificial relief of heat on skin, but bones buried deep among blackened coals. The curls at the nape of her neck are still wet from the bath,the clasp of her necklace caught in the fine hairs. She will have Bren untangle it later when they’re in bed before she slides her hand past the waistband of his boxers and makes him think of nothing but her. By the way he’s slamming things in the kitchen, she knows he didn’t expect quite that level of damage to the car, and telling him the baby’s sex wasn’t enough of a distraction.
She needs to manage this situation. Manage both of her boys.
She stands for a minute at the top of the stairs, looking down to where Jude is irreverently serving his sentence. The real surprise is that he stayed there, though he’s pushed the boundaries and lies on the floorboards with exactly one foot on the last step. He’s still crying, the set-in, soggy sort of sobs that rack his chest and seem half-hearted, though when he sees her watching, he renews to a fresh round of wails.
She picks her way down slowly and lifts him off the floor, sitting him down on the lowest step. He’s shivering in just his underwear and she palms his wet cheeks. There is a wretched woe to him when he’s like this, worn out with flushed cheeks, his eyes reflective opal pools, beautiful as a painting in mourning.
“Jude.” She keeps her voice low, modeling a calm, controlled mother she never seems to master. “I was worried when you were alone in the house.”
He mewls and puts up a weak fight to free himself, fresh tears tracing down his cheeks.
“It isn’t safe,” she goes on. “You could get hurt and Mama wouldn’t be able to come and help you.”
“The house could hurt me.” His little chest is racked with hiccupping sobs, his breaths too short and fast.
She’s about to say yes, to explainagainhow tools are unsafe and there are rotten floorboards and holes in the walls, but Jude rushes on, his voice wobbly with shrill fear.
“Because the house couldeatme all up.” His hands tremble fast and hard in anxious flaps. “It wakes up so h-hungry, and it wants to pull out all my teeth and put them in the wallpaper with the others.”
What fucking others?Elodie stares at him.
“It’s g-g-g-gonna turn me inside out, and all my little bits of meats will be stuck in the walls with the breathing. I don’t want it to eat me!” It turns into a shriek. “I don’t want it to eat me!”
With sudden fervor, he flings himself off the stairs and into her arms, wrapping his arms about her neck, his legs scrabbling to find purchase around her waist, so that when she stands, he hangs on like a desperate monkey. He weeps into her neck and she sways side to side as she cradles him.
Her mind is spinning, a tacky, sour taste in her mouth as she tries to detangle this wild outburst. This is a rapid escalation of his fears of things in the walls. “Whotoldyou this?” Apprehension unravels her voice, much as she tries to hide it.
He has to have picked these ideas up from somewhere. School, maybe. Or what if Bren— But she crushes that idea with a resolute snap. Bren sees this house as a magical wonderland, and it wouldn’t occur to him to tell ghoulish stories to scare Jude for misbehaving.
But then Jude’s tearful mouth is pressed close to her ear, his whisper breathy and sticky. “I heard it whispering under my bed.”
A crawling sensation skitters down her spine. His fear is on her tongue: trembling and salted, ripe with foul, anxious sweat. She needs to shut this down, to douse these weird, creepy ideas his imagination has latched on to before they nest like bugs under her own skin. But he snuggles close to her, his trembling fingers dug tight in her sweater as if he never wants to be put down.
She presses her cheek to the top of his head as her heart swells with starved, suffocating love. There is nothing she needs more than thisright now, her child wrapped up in her arms, fused to her with frantic need while she hums soft reassurances into his ear.
He has scared himself into wanting her.
