Chapter Thirteen #2
Elodie’s skin crawls and she is suddenly awake enough to push herself into a sitting position.
The sound is definitely coming from the wall behind the bed, not downstairs, where she last saw Bren drilling holes in the dining room.
A glance at the bedroom door shows it open a crack, darkness like black silt beyond.
No one is out there.
But the emptiness feels distorted, as if something has pulled out of the wallpaper to watch them and now crouches just out of sight around the doorframe.
“I spy,” Jude says, “something that goes scritch, scratch.”
scritch
scratch
Elodie starts, shrinking back against the pillows as her heart surges into a too-fast gallop. What the actual hell? She stares at the door, willing it to swing wider as Bren waltzes in with an amicable explanation about working upstairs after all.
“Bren?” She raises her voice slightly. “Are you out there?”
“Is not Bren.” Jude sounds pitying at her ignorance. “It’s the house. The one in the walls is trying to get out.”
“Jude, that’s enough. You’re being creepy and it’s not fun.” She wants to flatten her hand over his mouth so he stops speaking, but he still seems unconcerned as he clatters tiny cups against tiny saucers.
What one in the walls? she wants to scream, but she can’t give in to this sick little game he’s playing with her.
The door moves an inch. Stops.
Nothing comes in.
“Bren?” A crack fissures her voice.
Stop it, stop being ridiculous, stop letting yourself be unnerved by a child’s fucked-up little game—
The door moves again, another inch.
Her eyes dart to the door again and her breath catches as darkness closes long, elegant fingers around the edge of the wood. Shadows run in rivulets from the tips of sharpened nails as they stretch longer and longer. This is the kind of dark that wakes up, that suffocates.
She catches Jude’s wrist and pulls him to her, but he immediately starts whining before he lunges backward and shouts, “Thump, thump!”
BANG
BANG
Elodie jerks so hard she smashes the back of her head against the dark wood headboard, her cry disheveled, her breathing too fast, her fear flexing fingers round her throat, because there’s something there, there is something wrong with this house—
The door flies open.
Elodie screams before clapping her hand over her mouth to muffle the sob.
Embarrassment flares across her cheeks in a dizzying wave and she has to close her eyes, if only for a moment, to reorientate herself.
Bren’s hand is on the doorknob, his head poking into the room as he flashes a hopeful, eager smile. His once-white T-shirt is flecked with old paint and sawdust, his hair is in the tufty, sweaty curls that make him look so winsome.
It’s just Bren.
The sounds, Bren.
The door moving, Bren.
The thing in the house, only Bren.
Why would she think otherwise? He’s literally been working on the house all weekend, though casually rebuffing her offers to assist, because she is now banned from touching his precious walls with her destructive hands.
“Hey,” Bren says. “Are we having a tea party in here?”
Elodie breathes out, long and slow, her mouth full of cobwebs. “Something like that.”
Bren bounds into the room and without warning dives onto the bed. He tackles Jude, who tips sideways with a shriek, and for a second they are all arms and legs, tangled in the bedsheets. She reaches for Jude, expecting him to lash out in muted fury at the interruption to his game, at being touched.
But he’s laughing.
Bren pins him to the bed and tickles, Jude writhing and giggling so hard he can barely breathe.
It leaves her there, useless, one arm outstretched for an intervention that isn’t needed.
Nothing about her is needed in that moment.
She moves away, pulling the blankets around herself to hide the shivering as she watches Bren gaze down at Jude with the soft fondness he usually reserves for the unborn baby in her belly.
He tickles under Jude’s chin and then glances up at Elodie.
“I finished the dining room. Got the wainscoting done too. Though—okay, it’s not finished because I’m waiting on the chandelier to arrive.
Got this epic piece from an antique dealer, but tell me it’s a terrible idea to paint it black.
” He looks animated by the very thought.
She shrugs a shoulder. “Paint it black, you coward.” It’s what he wants to hear.
He grins and then lunges to grab Jude’s ankle before he worms away, dragging him back across the duvets and making a nom-nom sound as he pretends to eat Jude’s foot. It sends Jude into another fit of laughter.
All week she has cared for Jude, run after him, played with him, redirected meltdowns, avoided getting hit, changed his sheets after accidents, made endless snacks, cleaned his messes—and yet this is the first time he’s been vividly, breathlessly happy.
“Also, good news,” Bren says. “Guess who starts preschool tomorrow!”
Jude’s eyes go big. “With Ms. Heather?”
“Nope,” Bren says. “You’re going to a new school. It’ll be so fun. They have a super-duper big outdoor play area and they sing songs and do puzzles. Sounds like the best place ever, hey, Jude?”
He frowns, his fingers tugging at the paint flecks on Bren’s shirt, anxious and picky, a sign he isn’t sure about this new unknown.
Bren lowers his voice as he glances at Elodie. “Everything’s sorted. I … fixed the paperwork and then toured the preschool on Friday after work. Had a chat with them about how he is. Neat little place, very casual. They emphasize lots of learning through playtime, which is what you want.”
It feels like an invitation to open a fight, but she says nothing.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” he goes on. “Four-year-old Jude January is off to preschool on Monday.”
Jude January.
She doesn’t know how to parse the shape of it.
Bren heaves himself off the bed and scoops up Jude, flinging him over his shoulder like a sack of wiggling potatoes. Then he leans down and kisses Elodie. She almost turns away.
“Bren.” She tries to keep her voice even. “There’s something … I heard something in the wall—”
“Nope. House is fine. You’re leaving it to me, remember?” He turns on his heel, still carrying Jude. “I’ll do bath and bed. You relax.” Then he’s out in the hall, singing something off-key that makes Jude laugh, neither of them glancing back at her even once.
This is what she agreed to, the bargain she made, to let him take care of Jude.
It should be a joy, a delight, she should collapse in relief that she can sleep while Jude is watched by a man who owes him nothing and yet offers him love anyway. Jude January. The thorns of it pierce the underside of her tongue.
She curls in bed and pulls blankets over her head so that later, when Jude begins to cry from the depths of the house over some unknown slight, she can pretend she doesn’t hear it, isn’t worried. She is trusting her husband with her child.
Her guilt, her rage, pulses like a second bloody heartbeat in the back of her throat.