“Simon says”—her voice drops to a whisper to pique his attention—“do six spins in the kitchen.”
He watches her, his eyes gone dark and damp, but then he abandons the phone and scurries out from under the table. As he spins, she has to crawl under and fetch it herself, annoyed but also relieved the battle didn’t escalate. An alert notification is on the screen. He must have heard it buzz and it drew him in, honey to his sweet tooth’s craving.
She had forgotten, until now, that she’d set alerts to tell her if anything online ever mentioned her parents’ names. It had been impulsive, done out of fear when she first moved here, because while she has cut away everything about her old life like congealed fat off rotten meat, part of her wants to know if anything is said. About them. About her.
Except maybe she doesn’t want to know anymore.
She’s about to delete the alert, then hesitates. She’s worked hard to reshape herself into something enigmatic and quiet and impossible to find; looking over her shoulder at the past is asking for a swift punch to the gut. Her parents are nobody;sheis nobody. Unremarkable, unknown. No one should even care to talk about them.
She taps open the article.
There’s a podcast soon to air, something about true crime and cold cases with unsatisfying endings. The writers seem young and excitable, keen to prod at the churned soil of graveyards in the name of content, and somehow her parents’ names are in the article. Information is sparse. These armchair detectives know little to nothing, but they enjoy speculating. They are black flies to a bloated carcass.
… murder or suicide? The couple lost their young son years ago and neighbors report their older daughter ran off without warning. Such cruel blows could have sent them over the edge…
The world tips. She slides down to sit with her back against the cabinets, her forehead pressed to her knees as a wave of vertigo sends acrid bile burning up her throat. Jude has swiped an apple from the fruit bowl, bit into it and then spat it out, and he’s trying to hand her the soggy, rejected piece, his agitation growing the longer she sits unresponsive.
“Mama, I don’t like it. I’m hungry.Mama.”
Tremors run through her hands and black ice fissures through her lungs.Breathe.But she can’t.
She wasn’t going to think about her old life again, and now thewound has reopened, scar tissue unraveling like thread until she is pulsing blood all over the kitchen tiles. The mess is incredible, an Armageddon in every shade of violence, and she can feel her tongue loosening at its stump in her mouth. When she parts her lips, it will slip out, long and supple as a sausage, and she will watch it worm away across the floorboards.
“You stoppedplaying. I wanna play.”
She should never have looked at the article. She should have continued to seclude herself in this new life where she is a January and she has a husband and a house and a new baby on the way and everything is beautiful.
Pain shoots through her wrist with such sharp velocity that she lets out a startled cry. She yanks her hand away and stares at the neat row of teeth marks. Jude squats next to her, his eyes round and serious.
“Did you justbite me?” Elodie gapes at him, wanting to see remorse and instant tears of guilt after her shriek of pain, but he only tries to hand her the apple.
“I don’t like it.”
A wild red swell streaks across her vision and she thinks, for only a heartbeat, how she could just smack him across the mouth instead of going through the tedious agony of putting him in time-out where his tantrum will punish her more than him.
Bile is still in her mouth. She swallows it back.
That thought isn’t hers; she would never do that to him.
She stares at the teeth marks on her wrist as Bren bursts through the pocket doors covered in sawdust, with safety glasses pushed up his sweaty forehead.
“Did you just scream? What happened?” He hurries over and crouches by her, his dirty hands at her face, thumb smoothing her cheek. “You’re pale. Jesus, did you— Are those teeth marks?”
Recalibrate. Redirect. But she feels like a marionette, strings cut, as she slumps against the cabinets.
“Wait, did he bite you?Jude.” Bren’s bafflement turns into a hard glare, a muscle flexing in his jaw as he looks at Jude. “You’re in big trouble, young man.”
Jude’s mouth pulls down at the corners and he tries to tuck himself under her arm. She feels too untethered to push him away, too listless to protest when Bren finally notices the phone in her hand and takes it from her to start reading the article.
He could have asked permission first. He could have waited until she was ready to talk instead of zeroing in on the fact she has her phone out when he never does.
“What’s going on? Is this about— Wait. What is this?” He looks genuinely confused as he reads, and then his eyes go wide.
Her wrist throbs as if Jude is still clamped onto her. “Can you not justyankthings out of my hand?” Why is she snapping at him? She can’t lose her temper like this, she can’t let her teeth show. “I’m… I’m sorry.” She presses fingertips to her temple. “I’m in shock, I guess.”
“Elodie, it’s fine.” Bren scans the article again, his brow furrowed. “I mean, of course you’re freaking out. You had no idea?”
Numbness climbs through her body and settles into every nook. Jude squirms into her lap, wrapping his arms around her neck and sniffling wetly against her chest, cuddly in a way that would usually make her heart leap, except she knows he’s being tearful and pathetic to get out of trouble with Bren. It’s never about her. If she doesn’t put him in time-out soon, the connection of naughty act to consequences will be lost.
