Pettiness grinds between her molars as she stalks through Ava’s house. If she closes her eyes, she can imagine tar seeping poisonous and foul down the walls, soaking into the cream carpets with putrefying stains that will never come out. She slips around a corner into a sunroom with elegant Parisian rugs and photos in gilded frames, and when she rests a palm to the wall, she only wants to know if the same insidious pulse beats here.
But the wall feels cool. Nothing festers; nothing rots.
Down the hall, laughter rings out and dishes clatter from the kitchen, all the warmth and hustle and comfort of a normal family gathered to cherish each other. Wherever Bren’s vanished to, she has no idea. Her head pounds. She presses fingertips to her temple as she lets herself into a bathroom that looks straight out of a designer catalog and locks it. She presses her head to the door, waiting for the wave of nausea to pass, inexplicable in its sudden arrival. Morning sickness? But it’s a little late for that. Her tongue feels thick and swollen, and gulping crystal-clear water from the faucet does little to ease the discomfort. When she stares in the mirror surrounded in a frame of wrought iron flourishes, her face holds a peculiar gauntness.
When she finally eases open the door and creeps down the hallway, it’s the voices that make her stop. Quiet whispers slip inside one another like a threaded needle through silken paper.
Around the corner, a hallway stretches toward closed-off bedrooms. Elodie hovers just out of sight from the two people having a whisper-argument by the bay windows.
Bren and Ava stand close, their golden heads nearly touching; his frown a response to the downward curve of her mouth, her arms folded tight while his swing in agitation before he starts plucking at the edge of the lacy curtains to distract himself. He must’ve stashed the album somewhere.
“… take everything so personally.”
“But they always do this.” His annoyance is underlined with a wounded edge Elodie doesn’t hear often. “I talk, they ignore. I give an opinion, they talk down to me. They still see me as some stupid kid who has no idea what he’s doing.”
“They don’t.” She sounds soothing.
“I have a wife, I have a kid on the way.” Bren paces the narrow confines of the hall. “It’s still not enough? Or is it her? They don’t like her.”
The world has crystallized around Elodie, sharp and sweet as sugar on the tip of her tongue. She breathes out slowly, sinking into the words she always knew were there, just hinted at, never stated so fervently.
“Well,” Ava says carefully, “it was very… fast. I know Grandma was a little concerned.”
“Did you tell them the truth?”
“Of course not.” Something changes in Ava’s voice, a guilt thick as plumes of dust from long abandoned spaces. “I wish I didn’t know.”
Whatfucking truth? About her?
What do they know? What could theypossiblyknow?
Air slices the insides of Elodie lungs and she’s breathing too fast, her fingers at her throat because surely there is a silken noose slowly tightening about her neck.
“I need to check on Jude.” Footsteps sound on the carpet, and Elodie has the barest second to flee before she’s seen.
She hurries into the living room far too fast and has to take amoment to steady herself, to smooth her coat and fix a fake smile to her face as another one of Bren’s aunts comes over to exclaim about the baby and how beautiful Elodie looks. How sheglows. How excited they are for another little one in the family. Poppy needs a cousin.
Behind the aunt’s legs, Jude crawls about on the floor, flapping his hands happily a few times before snapping a puzzle piece in place. To them, he is the smudged pencil outline of a child, ready to be erased and replaced. Not arealJanuary.
“Sorry,” Elodie says, smiling sweetly. “I’ll be right back.”
She hurries over to scoop Jude up, ignoring his whining protests. As she stands, she notices Ava’s husband watching them from the couch, slowly swirling a glass of wine with an intense, dissecting look. He has been staring at Jude, only Jude. His eyes meet hers and she hurries from the room.
The bathroom feels like a sanctuary in this cloying house, and she puts Jude on the toilet despite his fussing. She needs an excuse to lock them away from everyone else, if only for a minute. He folds his arms and scowls at her with pure defiance, refusing to pee because she demands it. Only half her attention is on him, the rest of her mind consumed by the growing beat of the headache, claws sunk so deep into brain tissue that to extract them will leave cavernous gouges.
She can’t swallow that conversation she heard. She can’t understand it. So Bren isn’t enveloped in love and cosseted in support from the perfect, pretentious Januarys? It makes sense now why he’s happy to hole up in the house with just her and Jude. She massages fingers into her temples and squeezes her eyes shut. If he married her to try and be seen as a “real man” by his family, he should have found a girl with status, a girl with a pretty life and a lovely smile and a gold-trimmed diploma. But it still doesn’t answer what “truth” he is hiding that Ava knows.
Every way Elodie turns that conversation, it makes less and lesssense. Her skin is crawling from the inside and it makes her feel ready to pull out her own teeth.
Jude hops off the toilet and brings her his overalls, the buckles beyond him. He steadies himself on her shoulders as she holds the overall legs for him to step into.
That’s when she sees the new red marks on his thighs. Two of them. In places not immediately noticeable. Her stomach lurches, a fluttering panic crawling up her throat even as she tries to sound nonchalant.
“Baby,” she says, but dread is already tunneling through her lungs. “Did someone hit you?”
Jude shrugs.
“It’s important that you tell Mama if you’re hurting.”
