“Farrows, actually.” Elodie sets down a hand mirror and picks up a gilt jewelry box. “The houses around here are insane.”
“My husband wants to put in a bid for this place, but…” She sighs and rests her fingers absently at her throat. “I’m not thrilled with the history of it. The previous owner’s son is organizing the sale—that’s him over there—but it’s said his parents died in the house. A murder-suicide. Rat poison in their soup.”
Elodie can’t breathe.
She has been hit so hard in the chest that her lungs have folded inward, speared by the shattered remains of her rib cage. She is a paper doll, torn. Copper slides over her tongue, ribbons out between her lips like a bobbin unspooling.
“What did you say?” It comes out a breath, a whisper, the head of a dandelion exploding.
“… too far out from Maeve’s school— Oh, I’m rambling. You’ve gone pale. Are you all right? Do you need to sit down?” The woman looks concerned, reaching out to touch the edge of Elodie’s sleeve in delicate sympathy. She must see the bite mark, the yellowed bruise, because her touch quickly retracts.
“No, I’m—I’m fine. How did you say they died?” Her mouth tastes foul, bile barely swallowed back, the film still on her tongue.
“It was an older gentleman,” the woman says. “I believe he passed in his sleep. I’m sorry, I feel I’ve upset you?”
I misheard.Relief rushes in, elation pouring through her so fast she feels washed away. She manages to smile, to shake her head at her own foolishness, to assure the woman everything is fine, she’s just spacey thanks to being pregnant, but she should really go check on her son.
Her legs are jelly at she moves around the tables of antiques and squeezes herself between rows of furniture. Sweat coats her forehead in a fine sheen and she decides she has a fever, a stomach bug, or perhaps her first-ever bout of morning sickness. This could be the baby’s doing, the fleshy pink knot of it swimming in ferocious circles and twisting her insides into a whirlpool.
She is not losing her mind.
Jude and the little girl are squatting in the grass watching a ladybug walk over a fat green leaf. She talks a thousand miles a minute, narrating something about the life cycle of the bug, before reaching over tobrush some crumbs off Jude’s cheeks. Elodie can’t tell if he’s tolerating or enjoying this. Maybe this is a developmental milestone, him realizing other children can be playmates instead of unpredictable, loud, frightening creatures.
They both look up as Elodie approaches, and she pastes on a smile and tries to crouch down and join in, but Jude drops his rabbit and runs away from her.
Elodie winks at the little girl, as if this is all a game. “Thank you for being kind to him. I love your tutu.”
The little girl beams and smooths at her glittery skirts. “I’m a plum fairy sugar princess queen, and he can be my prince.”
Good luck with that.Elodie gives a wan smile and scoops Jude’s rabbit off the grass and hurries to catch him. If he knocks something expensive over, she will lose her mind.
So much for Jude’s brief bout of clingy affection yesterday, although she can’t help the anxious spike drilling holes in her chest at how this might be his reaction to what he heard them say about her parents. The need to know what he’s thinking grips her with such vehement desperation she is dizzy with it.
She finds Jude with Bren, who leans against the porch talking about renovations for period houses with the casual ease of an extrovert who can fall into easy conversation with a stranger in minutes. The shocking part is watching Jude run up and wrap his arms around Bren’s legs. Even Bren startles and stops talking, his eyes gone wide in surprise as he looks down at Jude. The estate owner makes some joke about “what a good-looking son you have there,” and Bren doesn’t correct him. He simply scoops Jude up and settles him on his hip like they’ve done this a thousand times when, in truth, they never do this. Jude never wants Bren to touch him.
Elodie pulls up short a few steps away, her fingers kneading thefilthy fur of his rabbit. Her stomach hasn’t settled; perforated anxiety leaks out of her ears, her nose, her eyes, until she is a mutilated horror, untethered from this world.
Jude casts Elodie a quick glance from narrowed eyes, then he rests his cheek on Bren’s shoulder.
A wild, foul roar rushes up her throat. This is pure, undiluted pain such as she’s never felt, not even when he split her in two the first time he clawed out into this world. Jealousy is a beast in her mouth, her hands are shaking, and she doesn’t know how to stifle this monstrous urge to storm over there and snatch him away.
Instead, she makes herself drift closer with quiet caution, his little stuffed rabbit tilted out like an offering. But Jude turns away and nestles his face into Bren’s neck.
Bren breaks off his conversation again to glance at Elodie. His face breaks into the biggest grin she’s ever seen and he gives a subtle thumbs up as he adjusts his grip on Jude. He thinks they’ve made a breakthrough, and he’s getting the cuddle of a lifetime.
The only thing happening here is Elodie is being punished. She is being abandoned. There is a scream behind her teeth and her heart is tearing itself in half in her chest.
She gives a wooden smile and wonders if any of them will notice the blood spilling out of her slit throat.
NINE
A slick, brackish residue haslined her stomach all afternoon, as if she’s peeled the dry skin off an old paint tin and slowly stuffed it in her mouth. Preparing dinner comes weighted with domestic tedium on a good day, but right now she feels revolted by the act. Her knife slices through cucumbers, but just as blade hits board, they begin to look like writhing garden slugs, innards oozing white pus all over her fresh lettuce. The gag reflex is immediate. She bends over the sink, knuckles gone white on the faucet before she gulps water and tells herself to get it together.
She’s felt sour and bruised since they returned from the estate sale. Embarrassing, really, when she considers a six-year-old’s rejection has hurt her feelings this much. Or maybe it was that moment of mishearing the woman at the estate sale talking about the owner’s death. It gnaws at Elodie’s nerves.
What is evenwrongwith her? This isn’t her. She doesn’t let her mind spin out like that, tunneling halfway to places wretched and unhinged. It must be the stress, that’s all, nothing some decent sleep wouldn’t fix.
She could tell Bren that she doesn’t feel well… Except, she can’t do that, can’t give him reason to worry, to look closely, to ask what shook her up when there is nothing wrong.
