“Great.” She tries to keep her tone neutral. “And maybe the dining room will just finish itself since it’s so close anyway.”
“I’ll get back to—”
“But you don’t, and all that dust keeps drifting into my kitchen. There are tools everywhere, all the time, and it’s not safe. Can’t we stow some stuff in the basement?” An edge has crept into her voice, a brittle plastic to her poor attempt at artificial levity.
“We don’t have a basement.”
“Wow, how nice that we’re the only house on the block without one.”
He must notice the snarl in her tone, because his effortless grin slips and he lets the sledgehammer hit the floor with a dull thud. “Hey, are you annoyed about something?”
“Nope. I just want to eat dinner.” She forces a thin smile and sets Jude down, her arms suddenly too numb and weary to hold him.
Jude tiptoes into the living room and stops, his bare toes surrounded by splintered boards and brick shards.
Bren brightens. “Hey, little buddy. Want to come see what I’m doing? You can help me hold the drill.”
The idea of Jude becoming comfortable with power tools, viewing them as toys, even, fills Elodie with dread. She should reach for him, snatch him back and slap away that encouraging hand Bren is offering to her child.
She stares at the crumbling wall, the ruin of bricks, the plaster dust coating the air and thickening on her tongue, a hole blown through to show everything ugly beneath. She almost expects it to expand into a wide, toothy mouth spilling over with festered blood.
Breathe. Stop this. Just breathe and be fucking normal.
She is fine. She is in control of herself, of this situation.
“That’s not a good idea.” She tries to catch Bren’s eye. “He’s so little—”
“Nah, he’ll be fine,” Bren says. “It’ll help him be less scared of the construction noise.”
“But I don’t want—”
Bren’s hefting up the drill in one muck-stained hand, pulling Jude in, not looking at Elodie. Not listening. Not caring that a tense anxiety has filled her voice. He should care.
“See, you hold it like this,” Bren is saying, but Jude lets out a shriek and flings himself away.
Startled, Bren nearly drops the drill, and vindictive relief steals across Elodie’s chest in a warm glow before Jude balls up his small fist and lands a solidthwackto Bren’s thigh.
“The house doesn’t like it when you cut it up!” he shrieks.
“Jude!” Elodie jolts forward, unprepared for this. “You are not allowed to hit people!”
But Bren is the one who snatches Jude’s arm, half lifting him up as he propels him backward. The movement is fast, hard, a surprising brutality to it that shocks Elodie.
Something flares in Bren’s eyes; annoyance, maybe, but tinged with a hardness she’s never seen directed at Jude before. “You can go straight to time-out for that.”
Jude lets out a ferocious wail just as Elodie snaps, “You’re holding him way too tight.Bren.Get off him.”
Bren lets go.
Jude flees toward the kitchen with a martyred shriek.
“What the hell was that?” Elodie stares.
“What?” Bren scrubs at the grit dusting his hair, still looking annoyed, but the hardness has already dissolved. Unless she imagined it. “I just stopped him beating on me. Like, Jesus, I thought we made progress today and he’s back to doing that.”
“So you were going to break his arm for it?”
“The fuck? Elodie, I just held him so he didn’t do it again.”
