Chapter Thirteen
THIRTEEN
“Let’s play a game,” she whispers.
This is how he understands things best. It’s the only way he can take hold of a concept with both hands without dropping it, without spiraling, without ending up on the floor sobbing his little heart out because he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand, and it frightens him.
Sometimes she thinks it will destroy her, the way everything seems to hurt him. She can’t bear it, her heart a shredded mess of a thing in her chest, and all she wants to do is curl about him like his angel of protective vengeance.
Mothers should be willing to die for their children, but she could not die alone; she would keep him tucked tight to her breast as they took their last breaths together.
They would be buried with foreheads touching, her hands forever cradling his tiny face as the first shovelfuls of earth hit their naked, bleached-white bones.
Bren will never understand how much she loves her son; she doesn’t need him to.
She just needs Jude to be safe.
She will make him safe.
That is her plan for this week Jude is out of school: the two of them alone during the day, her fingers finding ways to slip inside his head and remold his brain like warmed clay. She is doing what is best for her son.
“Red Rover, Red Rover, I call over…” She’s sitting in the midst of his nursery, surrounded by a chaotic whirlwind of toys, everything out of its box and pulled from the shelves as he builds a world for himself. “Little boys who are four years old.”
The game doesn’t typically work for two people, but she twists rules to suit her.
He looks up, puzzlement furrowing his brow. “I’m six.”
“You’re excited to turn six,” she says. “But first you have to turn five and then six. You know what we’re going to do for your birthday?”
His frown deepens. “What?”
“We’ll bake the biggest cake ever. It will have chocolate frosting and all the sprinkles—you get to lick the bowl.
” This is a tantalizing promise since she always minimizes birthday celebrations to a single cupcake, too goddamn tired to handle his overexcitement turning into a meltdown. “Come see what I have.”
He watches her warily, clutching handfuls of toy trains. He wears only underwear and socks and a teddy-bear-patterned sweater, and he looks so young right then.
She produces a packet of chocolate chips from behind her back. “This prize is for the winner of Red Rover, but I guess that’s me since no four-year-old came over.”
Jude huffs a little, takes a step forward, then pauses.
He looks so confused that she wants to scoop him up in her arms and smother him in soothing reassurances, but instead, she throws chocolate chips in her mouth.
That convinces him. He trots over and then flings himself into her lap so hard his forehead clips her chin.
She bites back a cry as pain cuts a white-hot line across her vision.
He didn’t mean to. She needs to stay calm.
His grotty fingers are in the chocolate packet. “I’m a winner!”
She holds the packet out of his reach. “You can have one for each year of your age. How many?”
He tugs at her arm, his mouth open like a baby bird. “Six.”
“Oh, no. That’s not right. How old did Mama say you are?”
The pause is long. He tilts his head up, and she forgets her throbbing chin as she is awarded this rare stare into his beautiful, fathomless eyes. They seem huge in his tiny face, and he looks made of porcelain right then, dark curls a mad riot and cheeks sticky with jam from his snack.
She kisses the tip of his scrunched-up nose.
“Four?” he whispers.
She gives him chocolate.
Everything fits together after that, her nudges gentle but consistent, her entire focus funneled into reshaping his understanding of his age. This will save him, save her, give him time to grow into himself and her time to mother him better.
Four chicken nuggets for dinner.
Four stories before bed.
Four new toys picked out at the store.
Is there a four-year-old who wants to go to the playground? Is there a four-year-old who wants to build a pillow fort? Is there a four-year-old who wants to play a game?
By Thursday, she is exhausted from being with him every minute of the day. His energy is a wildfire, lit bright and burning hard, and he tears through the house, lawless and unstoppable. He is thrilled to skip school. Every game must be played, every toy upturned in the nursery.
Usually, he is good about playing alone, repetitive as he stacks blocks and lines up wooden animals, but he must sense her need to cosset and please him, how she wants to make up for everything she’s done wrong, because he demands her attention.
All of it. She can’t say no, not when he’s in this rare mood of wanting her instead of pushing her away.
The bruises from the door slamming on her hand have faded to a mottled yellow, though she still flexes her fingers with slow, tender care.
Overthinking it doesn’t help, but she can’t fold the incident up in her mind when Jude is constantly on her heels.
Wondering if he will do something like that again.
Wondering if he did it in the first place.
Except, of course he did; there is literally no other explanation, unless she wants to believe in those spiraling, wretched thoughts about this hateful house.
Elodie presses her palms hard against her eyes, feeling the curve of her frantically shifting eyeballs. Stop this. How delusional can she be?
Focus on Jude, on laundry, on grocery shopping, on cleanup, on trying to sleep at night, instead of lying in the decaying dark, watching shadows run sooty tongues over the ceiling, and listening to the hinge groans and the tap-tap-tap of fingernails on the inside of the walls.
She can do nothing but roll into Bren’s slumbering form until he wakes up and holds her.
He mumbles, “I got you…” before falling back into blissful, unconcerned sleep.
And what is she going to do? Tell him she heard something? She isn’t that goddamn naive; she knows how it would sound after she tore up all the wallpaper.
She is not a woman losing her mind.
For all the bitter intensity of their fight last week, the way they broke apart bone to dip tongues into marrow and seethe at each other’s perforated edges, Bren has bounced back as if it never happened.
Grudges are like paper balloons on threadbare strings and he immediately lets go as soon as a fresh, new day dawns.
He is back to affable smiles and buoyant quips, his devotion cavernous, because she is his goddess, his love, his wife.
He is beautiful, he is insatiable, he wants her every night.
His thrill at worshipping her body is never-ending, and he is so reverent as he kisses her mouth, her belly, between her legs.
His hunger for her is an endless void that can’t be filled, deep enough to devastate a galaxy, and she feels swallowed whole by him.
Exhaustion owns her. She cannot hold space for them both, not Jude all day and then Bren all night. But this is everything she ever craved.
To be wanted with such ravenous, immeasurable intensity, to feed and be fed.
She is winning.
She is losing her goddamn mind.
On Sunday evening, she curls up in their huge four-poster bed with the intention of planning dinner, knowing full well she’s about to fall asleep and everyone will eat toast. A cold wind has leveled itself across Farrows, chipping its way into every hollow and gap in the house and settling in like an iced-over houseguest. It’s in bed with her right now, the cold, pressed to her spine and skittering fingers along the nape of her neck.
She’d pull the duvet over her head, except Jude is in the way, setting up a thimble-size tea set and busying himself arranging them on the slight mound of her belly.
It feels important to lie still, to let him play and hope this is his way of processing the new baby.
“Nine, ninety, nine flowers,” Jude is saying, some sort of gibberish song she hasn’t been paying attention to. “This one is coffee for Mama. Not for me. I’m not old enough.”
“How old are you?” Elodie’s eyes close, her energy flatlined, the tantalizing grayed edges of sleep almost in reach.
“Four,” he says without hesitation. “Maybe when I’m five I’ll have coffee.”
It worked. She’s so relieved she could cry.
“Maybe when you turn twenty-two,” she says.
“Then we’ll be the same age!”
Cold china presses to her lips and she cracks open an eye before taking a fake sip of imaginary coffee from the proffered cup. She does not feel like explaining to him that she, too, will get older, so she lets that one go.
He pauses to feed fake tea to his rabbit and then he bounces the stuffed toy a little too hard off her belly with a rocket-ship sound. His brother kicks beneath her skin in protest.
“Gentle,” she murmurs.
“Let’s play I Spy! Mama? Mama, did you heard me? I spy something that goes thump, thump.”
If she falls asleep now, it will be too late to give him a bath. If she gets up … Who is she kidding? She has already sunk deep into the cozy depths of this glorious mattress, her eyelids weighed down with sand, and she will never rise again. She just needs a little nap …
thump
thump
Her eyes snap open. She glances over to where Jude has nestled into the mound of duvets, cramming another teacup in his rabbit’s face. He must have banged his fist against the headboard, but he’s not close enough to—
thump
thump
It’s coming from inside the walls.
A cold, thick knot slides down her throat and hits her stomach, expanding like a water-soaked sponge, growing too wide to fit the space.
“Thump, thump,” Jude says, factual. “Are you playing spying? Guess what it is.”
“I think it’s just Bren working.” Her mouth feels tacky.
“No, it’s not!” He bounces on his knees. “You’re wrong! I win, you lose. Bren is downstairs.” He points to the wall. “Thump, thump!”
thump
thump