Jude is a moody sliver of shadow beside her bed, whimpering now, because she was rough with him. His fingers knot into the edge of the duvet, and he tugs as he shakes his head fast.
“What time is it?” Her voice is a rasp. She starts to reach for her phone and then remembers how naked she is.
Bren’s alarm goes off and he rolls over with a mussy moan, his eyes still closed as he fumbles an arm out to find her across the mattress. Of course he didn’t wake up when she was garbling a cry for help, her son’shandscrushing herthroat. Bren’s is the sleep of the comfortably unconcerned—he is going to get a stiff reality check when their newborn is screaming in the night and she makes him get up with it.
He blinks one eye open, sleep sliding from him sticky and sweet and slow, and she can see the marks her teeth left on his neck last night. The rush of vindictive pleasure is satisfying.
She yanks up the sheets to cover herself. “Jude, go back to the nursery. I’ll come get you in a minute.”
He stamps his foot. “No, no, no school.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Bren sounds groggy.
“He’s scared of new things,” she says, her teeth clenched, though what she wants to do is snarl at her child for hurting her when she’s just trying to do her best. She’strying.
“What…?” Bren yawns and scrubs at his face. “Buddy… it’s just preschool. You’ll play with blocks or something.”
Jude tries to climb up the tall bed frame, scrabbling at the blankets, and Elodie yelps as she nearly loses the sheet she’s clutching over her bare breasts.
“Ow, Jude,” she snaps. “Stop—”
But the sheet has slipped before she can snatch it back, and he’s on the bed, sitting on her legs and staring at the smooth mound of her bare belly. This is different to last night when he lined the teacups atopher, a ribbed sweater softening her changing shape, but now he can see exactly what she’s been hiding so diligently.
“C’mere, Jude,” she says carefully. “I’ll give you a cuddle and you can feel the baby, see? He moves a lot in the morning.” She cups both palms around her stomach, feeling the nudge of a tiny foot, the baby’s energy so much like his father’s.
Bren is tugging on his boxers, glancing at her with a question curved in his raised eyebrows. “I’ll get your sweater.”
Jude stares at her.
Then, with a swift and sudden intensity, he leans forward and punches her in the stomach.
Her gasp is instinctual, the pain delayed by shock. She imagines the baby folding in on himself like wet paper, absorbing the blow of his big brother in graceful silence as if he knows what the future holds.
Jude will hate the baby, just as he hates her, and it shocks her how much force he put into that hit. He’s so slight, he barely eats; he shouldn’t be this strong.
She curves one protective arm across her stomach and tries to snatch Jude’s wrist, but the way he’s looking at her—his eyes dark as moonless night, his small fists shaking, his breathing fractious and heated—makes her want to cry.
Then Bren has grabbed Jude around the middle and wrenched him off the bed. Jude gives a single, short scream of rage, but Bren looks unfazed.
“Are you okay?” he says.
“I’m fine.” She feels untethered, cracks in her calm feathering out across glass just before it breaks. “Let me handle him.”
“I’ve got it. Remember our deal.” Bren tucks the thrashing, wailing Jude under his arm and strolls from the room, whistling with affable calm.
Jude screams the whole way down the hall.
Elodie should have anticipated this, but she didn’t have time to prep Jude about starting at a new school when Bren only told her last night that it was arranged. Seeing evidence of the baby has only made everything about today worse. How much he understands is impossible to guess, but she wonders if he can see through the charred, festered layers she’s been hiding behind all this time: how the baby is her chance to try again.
Him, but better.
Shame fills her mouth with a sharp, metallic sting and she shoves the wretched thought away. She cannot think like that. Shedoesn’tthink like that.
A quick shower does nothing to relax her, and she loses another huge fistful of hair. It’s starting to freak her out. Maybe it’s the baby, or hormones… or stress, but it looked like an entire gnarled bird’s nest when she gathered it from the drain, and she feels lightheaded. With curls still lank and wet down her back, she finds her jeans won’t button. She’s tall and carried Jude high and small, so she didn’t anticipate the need to shop for maternity clothes yet. Leggings it is, then. She layers thermal undershirts and adds a chunky knit black sweater with big wooden buttons that hangs down to her thighs. Ankle boots. No time for the hair dryer, so a wet, messy bun it is.
She needs to appear at Jude’s new preschool looking effortless and elegant, the type of mother who would never pretend her son is two years younger than he is.
When she glides downstairs, he’s in the midst of a catastrophic meltdown: on the kitchen floor sobbing his heart out, his fire truck pajamas so threadbare that his teeth are chattering between wails. He kicks hard at the cabinets, his fingers in his wide, reddened mouth as he screams and screams.
