A hot shower does little to ease the tension spasming in her chest, her lungs, her belly, and she can’t help wondering if the baby is sucking down her stress. It will fester in him, congeal, corrupt, and he will be born with an empty chasm where his heart should be, his eye sockets teeming with worms of anxiety. She loses two clumpy handfuls of hair down the drain and finds the beginnings of an ugly rash on her shoulder.Great. Stress breakouts.
Determined to get ahold of herself, she spends extra time taming her curls, moisturizing her face, massaging lavender across her abdomen until the baby’s mouth blossoms with flowers.
Once in bed, she cocoons herself in mountains of duvet, her sweatshirt pulled down over her cold fingers and her phone cradled in her good hand while she tries to assure herself her other fingers aren’t broken. She took Tylenol. It’ll be fine.
She worries her bottom lip, scrolling until a pop-up notification warns her that her phone has only a 10 percent charge left. Her eyes burn with fatigue. Finally, Bren appears in the shadow of the doorframe, pulling off his shirt as he heads straight for the en suite without so much as a glance at her. What does she expect? She tore up his house, her son is in trouble at school, and he has to deal with it.
At least he leaves the bathroom door open so she can watch the outline of him in the shower, how endlessly long his limbs seem, the corded muscles of his thighs disappearing behind a thick towel ashe dries off and slips on pajama pants. He leaves them hanging low on his hips.
They are vain, both of them. They like their bodies, they like the way they fit together, how immortal they feel when the other looks at them naked and sees something they want. He is a young god, hewn from perfection, and he is more beautiful than the sun. He could have had anyone.
She wonders sometimes, in a quiet yet brutal way, if there is a reason no one else wanted him.
Don’t be fucking insane.
They met on accident, and he fell in love with her, and that is all there is to it. She’s just unused to something good happening to her.
“I’m not sending him back to that school.” Her voice comes muffled from within the nest of duvet.
Bren rumples his knuckles through his still-damp hair as he leans against the doorframe of the en suite. Behind him, steam fogs the mirrors. “Kind of thought you’d say that. But that’s the only elementary school in Farrows, unless we go Catholic.”
“There’s this private preschool.” Elodie spins her phone screen and he comes over to take it from her and read.
He gives a confused scoff. “But he’s six. This is for three- and four-year-olds.”
“They don’t have to know that.” She says it carefully, not quite looking at him. Her bruised hand lays atop the blankets, the throb heady but regulated now, and he hasn’t commented on it or even mentioned hearing her scream.
His silence bleeds into the shadows pulling against the edges of the room, a coldness to it that feels so alien she doesn’t know how to fit around the shape of it.
“You heard his teacher.” Her voice stays low, calm. “He acts young.He’s such a little thing, Bren, no one even blinks twice if I say he’s four, and his behaviorsfitthat age.”
“How the hell is this addressing the problem?” Bren stares at her. “We need to handle whatever is going on with him, not… not cover it up. Also, wait. You tell people he’s four?”
She ignores the last part, throwing fury back at him with a snap. “Oh, like how you’re ‘handling’ the rot in our walls?”
He gives her a tight look, shakes his head abruptly, and walks around to his side of the bed. For once, the monstrous size of their four-poster doesn’t feel luxurious—it’s a desert neither of them makes an effort to cross. He keeps his back to her, messing around with his old vintage clock.
“Don’t be a hypocrite,” she says. “Not with me.”
“Maybe we should take him to a child psychologist.”
Elodie sits bolt upright, her cozy burrow of blankets and pillows tumbling apart. “The hell?”
Bren rubs a thumb in the corner of his eye. “We could get some answers.”
“They’ll take him.” The anger is back, molten on her trembling tongue. “They’ll take himaway from me. How can you evensuggest—”
He flops backward onto the bed, reaching a hand toward her. She wrenches away. “Elodie, they won’t take him away. Why do you even think that? Kids with, like… special needs exist.” He fumbles for words he has never had to parse until now, because in the world of the Januarys, children are born beautiful and bold and faultless. “No one thinks youdidthis to him.”
Her bruised hand curls into a fist, pain reigniting. She feels like screaming.
“We need to get a handle on him before the baby comes,” Bren goeson. “What happens when the baby frustrates him and he lashes out at him?”
“Or when you demand he gives up his room—”
“Jesus, I’m not demanding! But he does need to transition to a big bed.”
“Or,” she says, breathless, furious, “we give him more time. Put him back in preschool. Tell people he’s four. He’ll be under less pressure and it willhelp him. He gets frightened. He’s so little, Bren.”
