She is being consumed.
Hot tears hit the crumpled papers in her hand and she sets them down abruptly. She digs fingers into her hair and twists with such brutal swiftness that she cries out. All this time, she thought herself the monster, tricking him into loving her despite all she’s done, but perhaps that is why they fit so well.
When a monster sees something else monstrous, he only thinks it pretty.
Slowly, her hand a detached thing floating in the air before her, she touches the edge of that ice cream tub and pulls out one of the test kits. Anticlimactic, she thinks at first. They’re just kits to test for lead toxins, something everyone does when renovating an old house. Dozens of them. Each used packet labeled with a different room name:dining room,kitchen,laundry,master suite,nursery…
Each and every kit reads positive.
For toxic lead paint.
Something shifts, a breath let out slow.
A footfall sounds, even and measured.
Elodie whirls around, her fingers curved like claws as she drops the lead toxin kits and presses herself hard against the unforgiving edge of the workbench. Her heartbeat surges up her throat and she thinks for a moment she will start screaming and never, never stop.
Instead, she stays silent as she watches Bren pick his way slowly down the stairs, still dressed in his suit, jacket discarded and tie loosened as he does the moment he enters the house after a long workday. He would have seen the destruction as soon as he came in the door and begun hunting for her—then found the power cord trailing through the pantry and down, down into his basement.
In his arms is Jude.
Her son looks rumpled and mussy from preschool, tired in a cross way with his thumb in his mouth as he leans into Bren with the easy trust of a child who feels safe. One shoe is on, the other off, purple marker all over his fingers. His worried eyes flick around the basement.
But they can’t be home yet—it’s too early. Or else she’s lost hours. She’s lost the entire day. Her mouth is full of dead things, a fist closed so tight about her throat that she still can’t catch a full breath. It’s only then, as she stares at him, that she realizes it isn’t dust layered thickly over the walls and furniture and broken crates of trash.
It’s black mold.
The room seethes with it.
“It’s not what you think,” Bren says.
She could laugh. She couldscream.
No anger lines his face. There’s just a steady sort of weariness as if she’s created yet another drama he has to clean up. His eyebrows drawtogether in worry as he glances from her to the papers around her feet like torn out feathers, soaking into the milky wet of the floor.
Elodie yanks the circular saw from the workbench and twists around, clutching it to her chest. Fevered rage burns through her. She is incandescent with it, trembling and ruthless and horrible.
“Give me my son,” she hisses. “Right now.”
Jude sniffles and lays his head on Bren’s shoulder, and Bren just watches her with careful consideration as if he’s sizing up how best to manage this nasty creature caught in his basement.
“You’re literally holding a power saw,” Bren says calmly. “Maybe put that down first. We can go upstairs and talk.”
“Fuck,” she snarls, “you.”
He rubs a thumb into the corner of his eyes, tired, so tired of her theatrics. “Listen, Elodie…”
“You fuckingstalked me?” She hates that it come out a question, her voice tipping high with disbelief at the end. “You pretended to stumble into me at that yacht club but—youfollowedme there. How often did you fly out to Australiato stalk me?”
“Look, I didn’t lie that I had family out there. So, I just… It wasn’t that often.” He sighs. “Jesus, you have to acknowledge that I nevermadeyou like me. I dated you properly. I never forced you to do anything.”
“Oh, that makes it all right, then. The psychopath love-bombed me and then asked for consent before we fucked.”
Something flashes behind his eyes—but it’s still not anger. Guilt. It is guilt, as softened and anxious as melted butter.
“I’m not,” he says, so very quietly, “a psychopath. I just… I just wanted you.”
Her fingers tighten around the saw and she takes a vicious step forward. “Don’t you dare—”
