“You’re excited toturnsix,” she says. “But first you have to turn five andthensix. You know what we’re going to do for your birthday?”
His frown deepens. “What?”
“We’ll bake the biggest cake ever. It will have chocolate frosting and all the sprinkles—you get to lick the bowl.” This is a tantalizing promise since she always minimizes birthday celebrations to a single cupcake, too goddamn tired to handle his overexcitement turning into a meltdown. “Come see what I have.”
He watches her warily, clutching handfuls of toy trains. He wears only underwear and socks and a teddy-bear-patterned sweater, and he looks so young right then.
She produces a packet of chocolate chips from behind her back. “This prize is for the winner of Red Rover, but I guess that’s me since no four-year-old came over.”
Jude huffs a little, takes a step forward, then pauses. He looks so confused that she wants to scoop him up in her arms and smother him in soothing reassurances, but instead, she throws chocolate chips in her mouth. That convinces him. He trots over and then flings himself into her lap so hard his forehead clips her chin. She bites back a cry as pain cuts a white-hot line across her vision. He didn’t mean to. She needs to stay calm.
His grotty fingers are in the chocolate packet. “I’m a winner!”
She holds the packet out of his reach. “You can have one for each year of your age. How many?”
He tugs at her arm, his mouth open like a baby bird. “Six.”
“Oh, no. That’s not right. How old did Mama say you are?”
The pause is long. He tilts his head up, and she forgets her throbbing chin as she is awarded this rare stare into his beautiful, fathomless eyes. They seem huge in his tiny face, and he looks made of porcelain right then, dark curls a mad riot and cheeks sticky with jam from his snack.
She kisses the tip of his scrunched-up nose.
“Four?” he whispers.
She gives him chocolate.
Everything fits together after that,her nudges gentle but consistent, her entire focus funneled into reshaping his understanding of his age. This will save him, save her, give him time to grow into himself and her time to mother him better.
Four chicken nuggets for dinner.
Four stories before bed.
Four new toys picked out at the store.
Is there a four-year-old who wants to go to the playground? Is therea four-year-old who wants to build a pillow fort? Is there a four-year-old who wants to play a game?
By Thursday, she is exhausted from being with him every minute of the day. His energy is a wildfire, lit bright and burning hard, and he tears through the house, lawless and unstoppable. He is thrilled to skip school. Every game must be played, every toy upturned in the nursery.
Usually, he is good about playing alone, repetitive as he stacks blocks and lines up wooden animals, but he must sense her need to cosset and please him, how she wants to make up for everything she’s done wrong, because he demands her attention. All of it. She can’t say no, not when he’s in this rare mood of wanting her instead of pushing her away.
The bruises from the door slamming on her hand have faded to a mottled yellow, though she still flexes her fingers with slow, tender care. Overthinking it doesn’t help, but she can’t fold the incident up in her mind when Jude is constantly on her heels. Wondering if he will do something like that again.
Wondering if he did it in the first place.
Except, of course he did; there is literally no other explanation, unless she wants to believe in those spiraling, wretched thoughts about this hateful house.
Elodie presses her palms hard against her eyes, feeling the curve of her frantically shifting eyeballs.Stop this.How delusional can she be?
Focus on Jude, on laundry, on grocery shopping, on cleanup, on trying to sleep at night, instead of lying in the decaying dark, watching shadows run sooty tongues over the ceiling, and listening to the hinge groans and thetap-tap-tapof fingernails on the inside of the walls. She can do nothing but roll into Bren’s slumbering form until he wakes up and holds her.
He mumbles, “I got you…” before falling back into blissful, unconcerned sleep.
And what is she going to do? Tell him she heard something? She isn’t that goddamn naive; she knows how it would sound after she tore up all the wallpaper.
She is not a woman losing her mind.
For all the bitter intensity of their fight last week, the way they broke apart bone to dip tongues into marrow and seethe at each other’s perforated edges, Bren has bounced back as if it never happened. Grudges are like paper balloons on threadbare strings and he immediately lets go as soon as a fresh, new day dawns. He is back to affable smiles and buoyant quips, his devotion cavernous, because she is his goddess, his love, his wife.
