Chapter 7
SEVEN
She loves the house best when Bren is home to fill it, when the weekend stretches warm and languid before them with nothing to do but follow their own tangled whims. They’ll lie in bed for hours with morning light pooling in their collarbones and slipping between their fingers like ribbons, and they’ll talk and plan and dream together.
About the house and the future and each other.
Something about those early hours makes her feel wrapped in an interminably peaceful cocoon, as if time is an amorphous thing, rich and endless, and it is no sin to waste it when she’s in his arms. His fingers are in her hair, his mouth on her throat, a worshipful tenderness in the way he promises to put the moon on a stick like a candied apple so she can crack it open with her teeth.
In these moments, when they are all hot skin and open mouths and he is inside her, it is easy to forget everything ugly about the past week.
“There’s an estate sale tomorrow about an hour from here.” He drops back on the pillows and pretends he’s not out of breath. She thinks he’s adorable, but he also has way too much energy. “Do you think I, uh, disturbed the baby?”
She almost laughs. “You’re such an idiot.”
“So, it’s a stupid question? Pretend I didn’t ask.” He pulls her into his arms and she tucks against him, their skin fractious and hot on collision, her softness molding into his hard chest.
Her smile is fond but all mischief. “But I want to talk about your sex education. I need a good laugh.” She pokes his cheek and he sticks his tongue out at her and for a second she isn’t a mother and a wife who should be serious and responsible; she is only twenty-two and in love with a beautiful, stupid boy who blushes adorably when embarrassed.
“Pity I’ve moved on to a new topic,” he says breezily, but his ears are still pink.
“Estate sales.” He’s rumpled and breathless and so, so young right then, and she can’t help but feel soft for him.
“The sale is barely advertised, so not a lot of people will be there, and I really want this 1890s wingback armchair set because it’ll go perfectly with the sunroom collection my parents already have.
Also, I need you there to tell me not to buy too much useless shit. ”
“I do so love being the pessimistic voice of reason.” She rolls away from him and he chases, propping himself up above her so he can lower his face to kiss her collarbone.
“We could go out to lunch after. Somewhere really, really nice.”
Elodie raises her eyebrow. “We are not taking Jude anywhere fancy. Picture this instead: McDonald’s.”
“I was thinking”—Bren kisses his way down to her breasts—“we could leave Jude with Ava for the day. We never go out alone, you and me.”
The sleepy, comfortable smile that had been toying the corner of Elodie’s mouth drops. She gives him the smallest shove so he rolls off her and thumps onto the mattress on his back. His pout is playful, but the confusion is there over why she would reject his reasonable plan.
Ava is perfect; her child is perfect. One hour with Jude and she’ll realize Elodie is a terrible mother, and Jude is out of control, and he’ll be hated, and she can’t bear for him to be hated—
“I can’t do that on such short notice,” Elodie says. “It’s not fair on Ava. And Jude isn’t ready for a day without me. Plus, this week has been really hard, and he’s still adjusting to even being in this country.”
“Hey. Hey.” Bren picks up her hand and threads their fingers. “It’s fine, we’ll take Jude. Family day out instead. All three—four of us.”
She breathes out. Tension unwraps its charred fingers from around her throat.
“But”—there’s something careful about his voice—“Ava does know what he’s like.”
Elodie glances up sharply, her last conversation with Ava prickling against her skin like stinging nettles. “She’s barely been around him.”
They’ve been cloistered in the house these last few months without much interaction from his relatives, something Bren hasn’t seemed to mind and Elodie has been endlessly grateful for.
They’re still settling in. They’re busy renovating.
When Ava does come over—usually with a casserole and a warm smile as she asks how everyone is—Elodie keeps Jude tucked away in the nursery.
The few times they’ve visited Ava’s immaculate house, Elodie lets Jude watch videos on her phone, a rare treat these days since he’s without a TV, and it keeps him quiet and occupied.
She has worked overtime to be sure the jagged edges of her failings aren’t on display and Bren is going to undo everything. The urge to snap at him blisters her tongue.
He rumples a hand through his bedhead, chagrin in his smile, oblivious to her annoyance. “I mean, I mention some stuff to her, but it’s not a big deal. Ava is the sweetest person ever. She understands.”
How about you keep your fucking mouth shut about my son? But she doesn’t say that. She waits for the windswept fury to funnel through her and smooth out, because she is not allowed to be the type of person to rage, to snap, to be merciless and vindictive. Not anymore. For her husband, she is new.
Bren isn’t complaining about her child behind her back; he’s sharing his life with the sister who has always loved and cared for him and now, by extension, cares about Elodie and Jude.
Perfect Januarys.
“My family isn’t like yours.” Bren’s voice is so sweet that a rush of unsteady emotion burns behind her eyes. “I swear on my life, no one will hurt you or Jude. You trust me, right?”
A traitorous tear slips down her cheek and he chases it with a kiss. She twines her long, graceful arms about his neck and pulls him in tight and hard and fierce.
Strangulation.
She never wants to let him go.
The cherished nub of warmth in her chest hasn’t faded all morning. Being up to her elbows in soapy dishwater should dim her happy glow, but she feels built up, alive, flourishing as if a hundred glorious flowers have grown all through her curls.
She understands now why poets twirl words into pretty bouquets and sing sonnets under windows to impress their lovers.
The high is explicable. She has been fed; she is on top of the world.
When they glance at each other—he with jeans slung low on his hips and a toolbox in hand as he heads off to work on the dining room; she with her curls piled on her head and her cheeks rosy, still wearing his sweater—they both grin at each other like bashful school kids who just shared a note.
E likes B
She doesn’t ever want this feeling to cool down, to become so common that intimacy between them turns into rote action done in the name of husband and wife. She wants always for him to ravish her and she to eat out his heart.
Eleven a.m. is late to be tackling the breakfast dishes, but today is for indulgent, unhurried laziness in her beautiful kitchen that is a stark oasis against the chaos of the rest of downstairs.
In here, she can pretend this is a dream house, everything is in its place, the new cabinet doors freshly painted, floor polished and clean.
She just has to ignore the reality of turning the corner to a hallway lined with paint tins and sawhorses and curls of wood shavings and grime thick where the carpet has been ripped up.
They just finished with breakfast, and she only has half her mind on what she’ll make for lunch.
Maybe egg salad so she won’t mess it up.
She loves this, though: washing dishes before a huge window, lacy curtains fluttering, herbs in pretty pots on the sill, the sink full of delicate crockery patterned in hand-painted sunflowers and tulips and marigolds.
She’s in a storybook, a fairy tale, and she doesn’t want to wake up.
It also helps that Jude has mellowed.
His nighttime wanderings are officially over since he’s decided the house is hungry for little boys, and he’s being clingy in the way she likes.
Guilt tugs at her, but she pushes it away with the firm justification that she didn’t tell him these scary stories.
She should just enjoy the simplicity of this: him following her around, tucking his hand into hers, twisting about her legs like a cat and dancing his toy rabbit over her feet as she works.
He’s playing on the kitchen floor, one arm wrapped around her calf in a coveted display of affection while he spins his rabbit by one of its threadbare ears.
The feel of him leaning against her, with no riotous tantrum hovering in their periphery, only adds to how happy she is today.
She is content.
“I spy,” she says, since it’s her turn again, “something the color of cream.”
“Ice cream,” Jude says.
“Can you see ice cream right now?”
“No.” His bottom lip juts out. “You’re doing it too hard.”
Something crashes on the other side of the pocket doors that lead to the dining room and Bren swears before the circular saw starts up with a loud whine.
Elodie waits to see if he’ll burst into the kitchen with an excitable rant about something he has done or is about to do, but only the sound of freshly cut wood hitting the floor greets them.
Elodie soaps up the next sunflower cup. “Keep guessing.”
Jude lowers his voice and says, “Fuck?”
“Jude. That’s not a color.”
“Bren said it first!” He pops off the floor and rubs his cheek against her leg.
“You’ve got one more guess or you lose.” She makes her voice stern, but she isn’t hung up on him swearing when it’s just them; there’s no one to judge her parenting.
His eyes go wide as he glances frantically about the kitchen. “The fridge!” He runs to it and slaps both palms against the door.
She was thinking of the cream-colored fruit bowl stacked with clementines and apples, but he looks so pleased with himself as he jumps up and down that she smiles so he knows he won.
They’ll play follow-the-leader next, and he’ll copy her as she does laundry and peels boiled eggs, and she will know where he is, know he is safe and managed and controlled and happy.