You Did Nothing Wrong

She thinks nothing of him at first. They don’t say hello; they only make brief eye contact from across the room, because her attention is on surviving this event for the next hour so she can flee back home to her son.

It’s one of the few times she has left him with a sitter, though it’s only the fourteen-year-old girl who lives over the fence and is primed to let Jude sit in her living room watching TV with her own younger siblings.

Nothing bad will happen so long as Elodie is only away for a few hours and he remains engrossed in a film and fed crackers when he starts whining.

Elodie put him in a Pull-Up, made sure he had his stuffed rabbit, and told the teenager she’d get forty dollars, just please, please, don’t take your eyes off him.