“I wanted someone whowouldn’t leave me!” It’s almost a shout, and he immediately holds his breath, checking on Jude as if worried he frightened him. “That’s all, Elodie. I swear on my parents’ graves. I—I just wanted someone who needed me as much as I needed them. And…” Now his voice has started to shake. “And you have to admit, you started it.”
Stalker. Liar.Monster.Panic has rent her apart, and she is full of a shrill desperation to get Jude away from him. She can barely parse his words in the vicious cyclone crashing through her head.
You started it.
She is sixteen years old at a crowded party, drunk and miserable, there to find a boy. Any will do.
And there is a twitchy, anxious boy in the back, skinny and gangling with hair all in his eyes and huge glasses blocking out the blur of his face.
The scream is inside her chest, her lungs, poisoning her as it rachets higher and higher.
“And you have to agree,” Bren goes on, low, “that I came for you at the right time. Do you think your parents wouldn’t have done worse to Jude? To you? They’re abusers. I just wanted to keep you safe. That’s all I ever wanted.”
“Bold of you to call them abusers,” her voice trembles, “when you secretlybeatmy child.”
“What?” He looks genuinely shocked, his body curving away slightly as if to protect Jude from her words. “I would never—”
“Hit him? He’s covered in welts!”
“The hell?” Bren says. “I thought that wasyou. That you were disciplining him. I was going to bring it up, but then I realized everything else you were doing to him—”
“I WOULD NEVER HURT MY CHILD.” It tears out of her in a roar.
Jude starts whimpering, pressing his face closer to Bren’s neck. Not reaching for her, not asking for her, not crying for her. If Bren did hurt him, he would be frightened to be touched.
“The glass in his food?” Bren’s voice rises to meet hers. “Faking that the floor was eating you? Brainwashing him to believe he’s four? Filling his head with monsters? It’s allyou.”
“Youare the monster.” She is gasping for air, but there’s not enough, not down here in this mold-encased tomb. “This house is full of lead paint.” Her cheeks have turned wet, though she can’t feel herself crying. “You’re poisoning us. You’repoisoning usand you knew it the whole time.”
Then she is sobbing, folding in on herself, the saw suddenly too heavy to hold.
Bren sets Jude down carefully on the lowest step, pressing his mouth over the top of Jude’s curls so tenderly. “Go upstairs, bud. We’ll get some dinner soon. Everything’s going to be okay. Mommy’s not well, and I’ll help her up to bed.”
Jude darts a furtive glance at her and makes no move to go upstairs as Bren edges carefully forward along the narrow pathway toward her. His hand reaches out, soothing and calm, corraling this rabid creature.
“It’s okay,” he whispers. “I’m going to make everything okay.”
He is upon her too fast and she can’t think of what to do. Her whole body racks with thick, drowning sobs, and it would be so easy just to lean into his strong, open arms.
His hands fold over hers, gently prying her fingers off the saw handle.
“Shh,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you. We’re going to work through this, you and me.”
She tilts her face away from him. “No.” It’s more of a sob than a word. “No, no,no. Not you, it’s not you.”
His brow furrows slightly as he watches her, and there is almost atactical, clinical way in how he surveys the diminished wreck of her shuddering body. “What do you mean?” he says cautiously, and then his eyes go wide. “Oh. Do you remember me now?”
You have to admit you started it.
She’s going to be sick. She can’t handle this, can’t hold everything she has understood inside herself. A wail sticks behind her teeth and she can’t look at him, can only whisper, through heaving sobs, “It’s notyou.”
“You chose me.” He says it with such tenderness that it punches all the air from her lungs. “So I just chose you back.” He draws the circular saw from her hands and holds it casually to his chest. “My only crime is falling in love with you, and how could I not? You were everything to me from the first time we kissed, and I only did the right thing by coming back for you.”
Her hands curl over her ears and she’s shaking her head hard and fast. “No, no,nonono.”
“I’m doing what any father should do,” he says easily. “Providing for my son.”
The world shuts off, silence hitting her with a slap, and there is only a sharp, high-pitched ringing in her ears as darkness crowds her vision. She is made of nothing. She is stepping outside of this universe, this reality, where Jude is not only hers.
