“Ooh, are we believing in the impossible now?” Bren grins and she hurls a pillow at him.
After he strides whistling from the room to start breakfast, she forces herself up and dresses in a pair of dark jeans and a turtleneck sweater of luxurious black. Her curls are caught up in a bun that reminds her of the days when she used to dance. Now her old warm-up routines are replaced with gliding about the master suite, picking up laundry and opening the curtains. Their room is beautiful with the fireplace and mantel refurbished, their mahogany four-poster bed buffed to the perfect shine. The flooring still needs to be done, and it takes effort not to complain about the lack of carpets and the way the cold seems to throb from between the grayed, shrunken boards in the mornings, because she doesn’t want Bren to think she’s impatient. Ungrateful. Bored of waiting.
When he first showed her photos of this house his parents had left him, she couldn’t believe it was his alone. His sister wanted nothing to do with this part of their inheritance—she had a larger share of their parents’ savings, though she made sure her little brother had enough cash to fund some of his renovations, too—and Bren had free reign over the whole house. Then Elodie walked inside and understood.
While the house is massive and stuffed with antique furniture and ornate woodworking and original carved cornices, it’s in dire need of restoration. They make headway on the weekends when Bren is freed from his accounting office and they can get covered in sawdust and paint together, but they’ve barely made a dent in the workload. It’s a long-term project; she understands that. At least she loves the version of Bren who will stand with hands on his hips, sweat patches under the arms of his T-shirt, tool belt hanging low on his hips and his jeans as filthy as the words he whispers to her in bed.
A load of laundry is put on before she feels ready to face the nursery. She’s a coward, acting like twisting the doorknob will release a creature made of milk teeth and bare finger bones, who will cut andscrape and bite until she bleeds. But that’s how she feels, sometimes, with Jude.
He lies motionless in the little woodland bed, morning sunlight listing through the gauzy curtains and dappling his cheeks, still tacky with dried tears and mucus. His limbs are bent like soft green wood, his thumb in his mouth, but at the sound of the door, his eyes fly open.
“Rabbit.”
“Let’s get dressed and go find him,” she says.
He is all shivering belly and tearful hiccups as she dresses him—something he should do himself, but already they’re running late and she doesn’t have time to watch him take ten minutes to put one leg into his jeans. Across the nursery, the enormous bay windows show a bright sky, blue as a tipped-over bucket of paint. Everything is so lovely in here, the colors warm and cozy, and she doesn’t understand why he tries to ruin it by pretending there’s something creepy about his walls.
When they first walked into the house, Jude had clung to her, whimpering. His teeth marks lined her hand from a catastrophic tantrum at the airport, and her arms felt like lead from having to carry him while wrangling suitcases. Once inside, Bren took them straight to the nursery. He couldn’t stop gushing about everything he’d done to it—the replicated wallpaper, the dusty vintage toys, the restored woodland bed. He started worrying Jude wouldn’t fit since it was apparently built to fill that awkward time between crib and adult bed, but Jude did.
He’s always been small for his age.
“He’s on a food strike,” Elodie had said, knowing Jude wouldn’t pipe up to correct her. “It’s only string cheese and crackers these days.”
This was the first time she was grateful he didn’t seem able to articulate his feelings, didn’t say things other children his age would.
At the time, Bren had seemed too giddy about the nursery tour tonotice the way she kept running fingers through Jude’s hair again and again, anything for an excuse to have her hands near his face in case she needed to cover his mouth.
Bren had taken tubs of toys from the shelves and shown them to Jude with eager delight. “What do you think? Coolest room ever, hey, Jude?”
The toys were endless. It was a wonderland, a bottomless well with endless capacity for magic. Built-in shelves lined one wall, stacked with boxes upon boxes of hidden treasures. None of it was new. No bright plastics or action figures from the latest movies—these were antiques stretched across centuries. Tin soldiers. Carved wooden animals. Alphabet blocks. Snow globes. Porcelain dolls with glass eyes. Original redwood Lincoln Logs. Old model train sets. Handcrafted peg dolls and china cats the size of thimbles. A rocking horse. An enormous wooden dollhouse.
Jude’s face had lit up.
For the first time since she’d walked out of her father’s house, Elodie could breathe. There was nothing Jude liked better than a game, and this would keep him occupied—and quiet.
There is nothing creepy about this nursery, just as there’s nothing off about the house, and she can only hope Jude forgets his hysterical imaginings of last night.
Once he’s dressed, she holds a tissue to his nose and tells him to blow.
“No more tears, all right?” she says. “No being naughty, and no wandering the house at night.”
His bottom lip trembles.
“You could hurt yourself,” she says. “Tools are not playthings. You have to apologize to Bren for wrecking his things, and then you can go look for your rabbit.”
She starts to rise, but he grabs her and for a second her heart swells thinking he wants a hug—except his fist is tight in her curls and he’s yanking her head to the side. She grabs his wrist to ease the tension, but pain smarts behind her eyes.Don’t let him know this hurts. Peel apart his fingers. Don’t react.But the hot rage that sweeps through her is wildfire that could blister skin from bone.
“Jude,” she says, anger barely bit back in the tremor of her voice, “let go of Mama.”
The way he looks at her is with such a childish, indignant fury, and she almost wishes she’d skipped the part about apologizing to Bren.
She has to take control. He is the child; she is the mother who built his lungs, his heartbeat, from pieces of herself. If she yells, she loses.
“Jude,” she says. “Let’s play a game.”
He lets go.
The last push to getout the door happens in a blur. Together, she and Bren tangle in the tag-team-race of grabbing their things and confirming schedules and surging into the crisp morning air. Car keys and thermoses exchange hands. She redoes Bren’s tie while he plays with the loose curls at the nape of her neck. Today he is the picture of a respectable accountant: dress pants creased, oxfords glossy, sleeves cuffed on his crisp white shirt, though he’s left it unbuttoned low enough for Elodie to appreciate the peak of his clavicle, the toned muscle, the smooth skin.
