Their eyes meet, his bright and confused against the tar she knows burns in her own. She’s overreacting, isn’t she? Did he even grab Jude that hard, or did she just think he did?
It’s been a long day, and she’s shaken after nearly being speared bythat light fixture. The weekend has been fissured with wrongness from the start, and she just wants today to be over.
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs at the same time he says, “Are you okay?”
Elodie squeezes her eyes shut, makes herself breathe. “Can we just have dinner? I’m very tired.”
He hurries over and rests the back of his hand gently against her cheek. “You should get an early night. Baby’s probably having a growth spurt or something.”
By the time Bren gets washed up, the chili is steaming hot on the stove and Jude has already lain on the floor to weep about how he doesn’t like SpaghettiOs. He does; he eats them every other day. This is ridiculous. She scoops him up and sits him in his chair at the kitchen table far too hard.Hypocrite, she hisses to herself, that she can blow up at Bren and then turn around and slam Jude into the unforgiving wood of a kitchen chair. But she just wants him to eat and then she can put him to bed andstop thinking,stop thinking.
Bren ladles heaping servings into bowls and sits down to shovel chili into his mouth. Old paint still flecks his knuckles, dust lining the crevices of his face. The kitchen table is crowded with dirty dishes and car keys and miscellaneous items no one has put away yet, and Elodie feels suffocated by the clutter. The chili looks sludgy, beans soggy from being frozen, and it slips off her spoon, leaving a greasy sheen of oil.
“Why don’t I put Jude to bed tonight?” Bren gives her a hopeful look. “You can take a break.”
She thinks about slamming her fist on the table so hard skin splits, but when she speaks, her voice is calm, unhurried. “It’s fine. I’ve got it.” She realizes that she never asked him about his plans for the nursery.
If he has intended, all this time, to kick Jude out.
“I don’t want any more.” Jude tries to slither under the table, but Elodie snaps her fingers at him.
“You haven’t even had any. Get your spoon and take a bite.”
“I don’t wantsoup.”
“It’s not soup.” But as soon as the words leave her mouth, she understands.
There is too much sauce in the bowl, the red of it already congealing into unappealing slurry as the night’s chill crawls up the floorboards and flattens itself about their ankles. He must be freezing in so little clothing; a better mother would dress her child warmly, wouldn’t she?
“I don’t want a poison soup!” Jude shrieks.
Bren shoots an unreadable look at Elodie, and she ignores him. She takes Jude’s spoon and dips it in the bowl.
“These are noodles. You love noodles, and there’s nothing wrong with them.” Calm voice. Stay unaffected. But she is spiraling backward as fast as a comet with its tail caught between the black teeth of an endless void. “You are having three bites.”
Jude is grunting low in his throat as he thrashes his head side to side. “I don’t want. I don’t want.”
“One bite,” Elodie says as she holds out the filled spoon. “Or else I guess I’m taking you up to bed with no more games. Just time-out in your bed in the dark.”
He’s whimpering now, but he squishes his eyes closed and opens his mouth. She shoves the spoon in.
“See?” she says. “Shocker how your food is nice, because it’s the same thing you eat all the—”
Jude opens his mouth and lets the mess splatter on the table.
Silence pounds inside her head so loud she can feel the kitchen sliding out from under her. She has lost this fight, this evening, and this isridiculous. He’s a fucking child and he’s acting like a toddler, which isher fault after all the things she’s put him through—
Jude bursts into tears, his fingers going into his mouth, the sobs ratcheting higher by the second.
“I swear to god.” Elodie shoves up from her chair, grabbing his spoon, knowing she will force him to eat and hold his mouth shut if that’s what it takes.
Except, Bren snatches Jude’s bowl away before Elodie can reach it. She is about to yell at him, but shock has sheeted white across Bren’s face.
He digs his own spoon into the SpaghettiOs, frantic, wild, then reaches in with his bare hands.
He holds up a piece of glass.
Elodie’s blood runs cold.
