Chapter 4
FOUR
The house feels like a liminal space in the middle of the day when only she exists between the stripped walls.
Her footsteps ring loud and hollow. Water pulses from the bathroom faucet with a thickened, mucous intensity as it washes over her paintbrush and she feels almost weightless. Or maybe this is the sleep deprivation.
Everything is easier without Jude, knowing she doesn’t have to run after him or fight with him or check on him a thousand times.
Everything is harder without Jude, knowing he is being seen and judged and found wanting by a myriad of strangers.
She is forever strangled by the need to protect him, to shield him, to pull a soft gossamer curtain between him and the world and lie with him beneath it.
They would be cocooned in safety, him sleeping, sweet and peaceful, in her arms while she presses her face to his hair and inhales that warm, lovely smell of baby.
Except, he is no longer a baby, and he is rapidly outgrowing her arms.
This kind of morose reminiscing does her no good. She should probably eat a better lunch and take longer naps so that, when the midwife asks, she’ll reply yes, she is taking care of herself.
She is taking care of this baby.
What she won’t tell the midwife is that, while this is her second child, this is the first time she has ever had doctor appointments, ever tracked the pregnancy on neat little apps, ever took supplements and worried about what she ate.
A printout of the first ultrasound is tucked in Bren’s wallet.
She even takes photos of herself naked before the mirror, tracking the way her body distends like she has swallowed the fabled watermelon seed and it has taken root.
This time, she is doing all the right things.
This time, everything will be perfect.
A low groan makes her head snap up, her pulse rabbiting into her mouth even though she knows it’s the old house settling. It’s easy to feel untethered being alone, easy to imagine a footstep, a sigh, the clack of teeth. Still, she shuts off the faucet and listens.
Again, the sound. This time it’s an exhalation, audible in a way that makes her skin crawl. In the back of her mind, Jude’s haunting little whisper sinks hooks into her throat. I can hear you breathing in there.
Except, she’s being ridiculous and she didn’t hear anything. Paint solvent stings the air and the fumes must be messing with her head. It can’t be good for the baby.
The only reason she helps is to impress Bren, to absorb his interests so they can fuse ever closer together, teeth roots grown inside one another and jawbones knit together.
She needs to be wanted by him so deeply that nothing else matters.
Although, sometimes, as she watches him fixate on his renovation plans with hyperexcitement, she feels as if she is competing with the house for his affections.
Elodie lays the paintbrush on the edge of the sink to dry and then wipes her wet hands on her jeans as she marches back into the living room.
She pretends this isn’t to reassure herself she’s still alone.
Wood shavings dust the floor, and the kitchen cabinet doors she’s been working on glisten under their fresh coat.
Across from her, a huge section of the wall has been punched open, wooden posts peeking out like rib bones from the ragged plaster.
She and Bren are butchers, merciless as they tear and drill and saw at this house and rend mottled, bloodied flesh from bone in an effort to turn it into something beautiful.
Elodie gives an unamused huff as she glances at the ragged hole.
Wind humming through the gap is probably the cause of the “breathing,” but she can’t help running her hand across the wall, her senses on taut alert, as if she’s waiting for it to exhale.
Ridiculous. But she’s realized all the windows are closed and the air is still and lifeless.
Her fingers touch something wet inside the wall.
Slick and fresh and warm.
She yanks her hand back with a sharp gasp.
Her first thought is rational: a leak in the upstairs bathroom.
It takes effort to ignore her runaway pulse and force herself to take a better look.
She wedges her head and shoulders through the hole in the plaster, uneasy about how much space there is inside these walls, as if a whole person could easily fit in here.
She searches for dampness or mold, careful of the splintered wood, but all she feels is stagnant breath on her neck.
A draft? She leans in further as she tries to see, all the while admonishing herself for being unreasonable.
No rot, no leak. And it’s definitely not the walls breathing, Elodie. Get a grip—
She looks down at her hand.
It’s smeared red.
“Shit.” Elodie jerks backward and smacks her head on the harsh edge of the hole.
Pain splices her vision for a second and she grits her teeth as she hurries to snatch a rag and put pressure on the cut.
She doesn’t know why she didn’t feel it.
Or smell it. The stench of copper pennies is everywhere now, turning her stomach inside out.
In the kitchen, she wrenches on the faucet to wash off the blood, but when she unwraps the paint rag, her hand looks clean. No gaping flesh, no wound.
Yet red still stains the rag. Paint, then.
Her phone buzzes in her back pocket and she jolts in surprise before giving her head an annoyed shake. She is way too jumpy today. She tosses the rag in the trash as she answers.
“Heyyy.” The honeyed drawl of Bren’s voice feels like a hug. “So you know that little café we like on Main Street?”
Relief at the sound of his voice makes her melt. She tucks a sweaty curl behind her ear, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Maybe.”
Meet me there, she wants him to say. I want to be with you at the midwife appointment.
“So, Ava will be there at three, and you should totally join her! I was talking to her today, and she wants to get to know you better. Timing fits, right? Your appointment isn’t until late?”
What exactly is he telling his sister? It better not be about Jude. Elodie picks at a scab of paint on the rucked-up sleeve of her sweater. “I don’t know…”
“She’s got newborn clothes for you! C’mon, babe. I worry you’re lonely.”
“I’m not lonely.” She keeps her voice light even though she wants to snap. “I have so much to keep me busy.”
Now if she mentions the blood in the wall that wasn’t in the wall, she’ll sound needy, a lonesome person who is losing it after a few hours in a silent house. She’ll forget about it. It clearly wasn’t anything. But her heart is still beating too fast, her breathing slightly unsteady.
“Ava adores you.” Bren says it with such heartfelt confidence. “You can ask her stuff about, you know … how she copes with it all. So, around three is good, right?”
“Around three,” she repeats flatly, but he takes it as agreement.
“Okay, cool. I’ll be home late because my life is paperwork. I love you so much my heart explodes every time I think of you.”
She can hear the sappy smile in his voice, imagine him looking ridiculously pleased with his own over-the-top, gushing affirmations. At least she doesn’t have to mask the sour pull of her mouth since he can’t see her face.
“Love you too.” Just not so much at this moment.
She wants to be annoyed at how he organizes things without telling her, how he arranges her neatly into boxes that suit his idea of what a young pregnant woman should be doing, as if she is his doll left too long alone in his dollhouse.
But isn’t this what it is to be cared for? She has been rescued from her parents’ silence, from the way they looked through her, walked past her when she cried, drew back if she stepped closer. Until Bren, no one thought about her.
Now she is thought of all the time.
Downtown Farrows is a quaint, boxy place, filled with old cottages and vintage shop fronts and shingle roofs. Ivy crawls over brick churches and flower boxes of perennials blossom in all the windows. It is a picturesque, close-knit community with not a stain on its name.
Come to Farrows. Raise your family here. Nothing has ever gone wrong.
Elodie walks into the little café with her cheeks flushed from the thistle-sharp chill of the Friday afternoon.
She has showered, tamed her hair into a loose bun, slid on her wedding ring, and fastened the silver necklace Bren gave her around her neck.
She knows she must look severe like this, black coat, tall boots, expensive dark jeans, two curls framing her cheekbones.
She always feels like a sliver of moon and midnight against the pastels of the January family.
Ava sits in a secluded corner of the café with her toddler, both of them a matched set in lavender and lemon yellow.
Where Bren has excitable, fervent energy and chapped, ruddy hands from woodworking, his sister is all delicate petals and pearls, her blond hair loose to her shoulders and her smile demure and sweet.
She’s older by six years and took on a mother role for Bren after their parents died when he was ten.
This is why he worships her, why she dotes on him.
They were all each other had for so long, and though he doesn’t talk about it much, she knows what happened to his parents is like a gunshot wound blown right out of his chest and he will never stop bleeding.
Ava has dressed two-year-old Poppy in a smocked romper with lacy socks and white Mary Janes, and there isn’t so much as a crumb or marker stain on her hand-embroidered collar.
Elodie tries to imagine placing her sharp-edged baby in Ava’s arms, with its hair an oil slick and eyes like black buttons. There is no way this baby will look anything like the golden Januarys. Jude is a shattered mirror, each sliver reflecting his mother’s face, and the new baby will be the same.