Everything should be perfect now.
When they returned home, she didn’t make Jude lunch. She would have, of course, if he’d asked, but he was chewing his rabbit and kept scurrying away from her mulishly, so she went upstairs and took a nap.
Yet she is still tired.
She scrapes the entire cucumber into the trash.
She’s been in this kitchen for hours and accomplished nothing. What has she even been doing? A thumb to her temple doesn’t alleviate the pressure.
Something is wrong with her, with this meal, with this whole night. She should’ve asked Bren to order in, but it still worries her, if it secretly annoys him that she can’t cook. There hadn’t been space in the mildew-riddled garage where she used to live to do more than slap together sandwiches and heat up cans of soup. Even now that she has a decent kitchen and stocked pantry, the idea of putting together a nutritious, satisfying meal still leaves her feeling pressured and anxious.
Bren must complain to Ava about it, because she makes sure to pop by several times a week with a massive chicken noodle casserole or lasagna with reheating instructions printed neatly on the lid, because obviously her darling brother will starve if left to the machinations of this strange woman he plucked out of nowhere.
A Tupperware box of chili defrosts in the sink, but when Elodie shakes off the ice still crusted to the lid, the contents look like thechurned remains of an overturned stomach. Well, Jude will never eat that. She grabs a tin of SpaghettiOs from the pantry, cranks the lid off with a can opener, and dumps the contents in a bowl for the microwave. A tiny nub of guilt tugs at her for not feeding him lunch, but he would have asked if he was hungry—any other child would.
Only hers shuts himself in the nursery to play for hours upon hours alone, needing no one, wanting nothing.
Somewhere in the house, the power saw whines to life and wood splinters with a crack. Elodie’s jaw twitches.
Bren was meant to be finishing the dining room, but of course the acquisition of his new wingback chairs has him pivoting to the living room again with excited explanations about how he has a “plan” and a “vision” and he’ll finish off that first thing “in just a sec.” A moldering, plum-colored cloud has settled over Elodie’s mood, but if he would justfocuson finishing something so that this house would become livable, that would be great. She is sick of the fine layer of sawdust over everything.
Stomping somewhat aggressively, she heads upstairs for Jude, envisioning the requisite meltdown at her suggestion he abandons his game for something as awful and cruel and oppressive asdinner. Hand on the nursery doorknob, she makes herself take a breath, pack down the broiling sludge building up in the back of her throat. Calm oceans, calm skies. He is the child; she the adult.Take control.
She swings open the door.
Mess is expected, but this is at a whole new level—it looks like he’s dumped out every toy. The weariness that shoots through her bones leaves her dizzy. She is the one who will have to clean and reorganize all this. She alone. And she has no one to blame but herself. If she just let Bren help with Jude… but she can’t. Tidying the nursery would be one thing, but she can imagine him pushing for more with that guileless cheer that melts her heart in other circumstances and puts her on edge when it comes to her child.
Jude is her responsibility, and she doesn’t need help.
Jude is hers.
Elodie sighs and leans against the nursery doorframe as she watches him play. There is something soft about the way he sits in the midst of his catastrophic hurricane, stripped down to his socks and undies and white thermal T-shirt, his mangy rabbit in his lap, tiny wooden animals lined up before him as he covers each one in a tissue-paper blanket. His back is to her; he doesn’t turn, though he must have heard her come in. She can hear him whispering, “One for you, one for you…”
The simmering foulness in her chest ebbs.
She needs to stop worrying about that day they left her parents’ house, stop thinking about their deaths. Jude wouldn’t remember anyway, not when he’d been so disorientated and feverish, trying to claw into her arms with terrorized desperation. It’s in the past and she has worked endlessly hard to move on.
All she cares about is protecting her son, as a mother should.
“Jude,” she says softly. “Let’s play a game.”
He swivels, his scowl morphing into curiosity as she starts singing a little rhyme about going on a bear hunt that will lure him from his paradise.
She strides from the room, exaggerating her steps and swinging her arms like she’s leading a marching band.“We’re going on a bear hunt. We’re going to catch a big one.”
He scrambles out to run behind her, repeating the stanzas in his childish, breathy voice. It’s a simple game, one she brings out when she needs to move him from one place to another. It would be easiest to go straight to the kitchen, but she indulges his need to play by leading them on an expedition all through the house.
“We can’t go over it. We’ll have to go—through it!”And she’s climbing over the pile of washing on her big four-poster bed, while Jude clambers after her, all floppy limbs as he pants like an excited puppy.
He loves her like this, getting down on all fours and being silly; she loves him like this, mirroring her and reaching for her and wanting to be close.
They repeat the rhyme as they find more obstacles—a closed door, packing boxes Bren hasn’t moved yet, furniture in forgotten rooms all covered in sheets—going under and through and over things until he’s giggling and grabbing hold of her belt loops so he can bounce along behind her.
There is power in being able to make him happy; there is comfort in it. No one else in the world can spin him until he shrieks with laughter like she can.
He runs ahead of her and crawls under an antique table covered with a dusty cloth, giggling as his small socked feet vanish. Above, an old iron light fixture flickers, a moth beating itself to death on the single working bulb. Elodie tries to ignore it and instead makes a show of searching for Jude.
“Hmm, where could he…be!” She whips back the sheet with a playful roar, but beneath the table is empty. “Jude?” She stands, her smile confused, because she isn’t sure how he could’ve squirreled his way out the other side so quickly. Except, he’s not on the other side.
