“Fine,” she says, terse. “If you get in a specialist to confirm it’s notmold first. Because there is no way we’re staying in a house that makes us sick.”
He throws his hands in the air in exasperation. “Nobody is sick! It’s not dangerous. Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a little—”
She turns on her heel and storms away.
In the kitchen, she finds an unsurprising puddle of milk on the floor and Jude standing in it, his socks soaked, a cookie in each hand and his cheeks stuffed like a chipmunk. She kneels next to him, ignoring the milky mess, and tugs him in for a tentative hug. He allows it, though his small body tilts away from hers in resentful disdain. At least the cookies override his need to run away. At least he’seating.
“Why’d you hurt the house?” he says.
She needs to tell him the house isn’t alive; he needs to please,pleasestop saying this where other people can hear. “Houses don’t feel, baby.” She tucks his curls behind his ears. “Is it scary being at school? Is that why you get upset in the classroom? Do you want Mama while you’re there?”
“No.” Jude takes another huge bite of his cookie and chews with fierce concentration. “It’s only scary here.” Then he points behind her with a crumb-covered hand.
Elodie turns, expecting Bren, but there’s nothing but the wall. When she looks back at Jude, he’s munching with unconcerned concentration.
She wants to scream, to fold in half and bleed out her frustration, but all she can think of is how Bren cared only about the wallpaper. Not the problems with his house.
As if he already knew the rot was there and had covered it up with delicate floral wallpaper, because a problem doesn’t exist if no one can see it.
TWELVE
Her anger about the wallshas distilled into something sharp and mercurial, the taste of it scorched into her tongue as she kneels in the nursery slamming toys back onto their shelves. Night has slid a cold blade under the windowsills—because of course there are gaps; of course they still need fixing—and it tunnels inside with a steady frost that leaves her fingers feeling numb and clumsy. She wants to put Jude to bed so she can think, but he just ate sugar-loaded cookies and he’s thrumming with energy at nine p.m.
Yes, she’s a responsible parent. Yes, everything is under control.
Her teeth clench so tight they could snap off at the root.
Jude will never go back to that school. A livid flush still blooms high on Elodie’s cheekbones, and all she can think of is how dangerous a teacher like that is.
She doesn’t want people to look at her son; she doesn’t want them to look at her.
Thimble-size fairy dolls are scattered across the floor and she scoops them up to dump in a vintage cookie tin, trying to force her exhausted brain to turn this into a game so Jude will help. Why bother. She’ll just end up snapping at him.
He’s currently playing with the dollhouse, flapping both hands and then rearranging the furniture in ways that make sense only to him. All dolls have been discarded, and he plays only with the tiny beds and china plates and miniature plastic food.
There’s nothing wrong with him. It’s just Jude.
The only thing wrong, she thinks as she smooths down the pages of scrunched-up books,is this falling-apart house.
She has to push Bren to take the rot in the walls seriously, but first she needs to blunt the edges of her anger so that she doesn’t bite into him before he can get a word out. He stayed unequivocally on her side when Jude’s teacher started leveling accusations, so the least Elodie can do is trust that he isn’t lying about the walls. This is an old house. Walls leak. It might truly not be rot or mold. It could be something… else.
What thehellelse? What if it’s noxious—
Stop.She doesn’t understand old houses. Bren does.
He has never given her reason not to trust him.
She pushes to her feet. “Okay, mister, shut the dollhouse and get into bed.”
The wail of protest is expected, but she has little patience for it tonight. Jude scrambles behind the dollhouse, but his butt still sticks out. Elodie rolls her eyes and kneels to push the two halves of the massive house together herself. It’s a gargantuan thing, the wood heavy, and it’s at least fifty years old, if not more. This late at night, the real slivers ofwallpaper and carpet, real scraps from the curtains and chipped shingles from the roof, all feel eerie. As if it’s a rotten tooth pulled from the main house. It takes a good shove to get the halves back together, but she’s barely paying attention, focused instead on a well-trodden spiral: how she is a bad parent, she can’t even tidy the nursery properly, she didn’t brush his teeth or change his bedsheets, she hasn’t forced him into fleece pajamas now that the temperature is dropping—
One side of the dollhouse swings forward abruptly and slams on her fingers. She lets out a shrieked curse, surprise overruling the pain as she yanks her hand free and clenches her throbbing fingers into a fist.
“Jude! Don’t be a pest!” She whips around, expecting Jude to be hovering behind her, looking cross about bedtime, but he’s not there.
He ducks behind the dollhouse again, and she thinks she catches a muffled giggle.
“You don’t hurt your mama.” She checks her hand, sucking in a sharp breath. The bruise won’t be bad.
