She will tell no one what happened. They’ll simply vanish in the night, taking Bren’s car as far as they dare and then abandoning it for buses and trains.
if the house lets you go
Jude lays his head on her breast, his breathing hitching.
Delusion has eaten her up. What is shethinking? They will never leave this house, not when it has tasted them and wants the rest of the meat it hasn’t yet sucked off their bones. When their absence is noted, when Bren doesn’t come into work and Ava grows worried, people will come to the house. They’ll break down the door. They’ll see all she has done and they will blame her.
She will be torn from Jude; she will never see him again.
And then they will ask her son what happened.
did the saw turn on by itself or did your mother—
A soft, aching dusk has crept across the house and even as the world tilts toward night, Elodie’s eyes remain dry, her heart calming to a dull, steady beat. She rests her cheek against the top of her son’s head, rocking in a slow, gentle rhythm. He fits against her like a puzzle box. He is made of her, his lungs sewn from hers, her heart only beating because his does. He is hers only.
He is never allowed to be Bren’s.
“We’ll have a bath.” She is calm; she is controlled. She stares at the blood sliding down the wall and she does not blink. “Then Mama will make you some nice warm soup.”
TWENTY-TWO
It feels like a ritual,this bath, something sacred and tender, as if it is her own spilled pearl tears she washes him with, her all-consuming devotion. Lit candles perch on the windowsill, vanilla and lavender, and she leaves the overhead lights off so the dark wraps around them in a gentle cocoon.
Outside of the bathroom, fingers push between the cracks in the floorboards and the walls beat a heady, vicious pulse, the house’s heart throbbing against paper turned thin as shimmering membrane, stretching to show the outline of the viscid organ beneath. It’s a drumbeat; it’s a countdown. She ignores it.
She runs the bath deep and warm, being lavish with the bubbles and arraying her coveted stash of little seashell soaps along the rim so Jude can play with them. He’s always stealing them from her. She undresses him carefully, lifting him in because he is inert with exhaustion. Whenshe sponges his face and offers him a delicate little soap, he doesn’t react. Once, he lifts a hand to look at his pruned fingers, but there is nothing in his eyes.
The water turns a soft petal pink.
She rests her chin on the edge of the tub, her heart aching as she watches him. “You are my perfect, sweet boy.”
This is a Jude she is unused to, quiet and docile, not fighting or defying her or protesting for no better reason than wanting to push against the pliant edges of her will and see what gives. Though now, as she cups water in her palm to tip over his curls, she wonders if that is even the reason they have always cut into each other with sharp teeth and bloody mouths. Or if abandoning him again and again to scream himself hoarse in his crib, if drugging him to sleep so he wakes disorientated and sick, if leaving him locked in the garage for two days while she floated in paradise with Bren all carved this understanding in his mind that if he was alone and frightened, he should react with violence, with hysteria, because eventually it would bring his mother back to him. He is different; she knew that back then and she knows it now: his mind following patterns hers doesn’t, his delays, his regressions. She never knew how to care for him.
But there is nothing wrong with him; there was only something wrong with her.
She is crying as she dries him in her big, fluffy towel and sits him on her lap to comb his wet curls. The swelling red marks on him were never signs of being struck. She’s heard of it before, the rashes and outbreaks that can come from bare skin interacting with mold and lead toxins. He was always playing on the floorboards of the nursery in only his underwear.
When she opens the bathroom door, the candles blow out behind her, a solemn farewell.
When he was a baby, there was a fat roundness to his little thighs and his milk-filled belly. Only now she sees the boniness of him, the fragility of his wrists and ribs like curved sticks. She imagines him a carving done of soft soap, whittled too far with a paring knife, the floor layered with shaved curls of creamy white.
In the bedroom, she turns on one bedside lamp, casting one corner in a dim, muted glow. Clean baskets of unfolded laundry are tipped over and searched through until she finds his favorite fire truck pajamas. At least he smells clean and sweet, her beautiful child sitting on her bed and staring at her with his black button eyes.
Maybe he didn’t see what really happened in the basement. Maybe he didn’t understand.
She reaches out to push a wet curl from his face, and he flinches.
So there is her answer.
Her eyes close, her lungs caving in, and she can feel the untethered edges of herself begin to unravel because it will be impossible to fix herself yet again when his mouth holds all her secrets.
The house has never felt so still.
Silence pulses behind the locked door, sticking fingers under the crack to test for weakness. This space has somehow been left an oasis of clean laundry and mussy bedsheets, comfort only marred by the fact she can still see the shape of Bren preserved in the rumpled twist of the duvet, imagine the weight of him sunk into the mattress as he gathers her in his arms.
Hear the way he screamed.
Or was that her.
