Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
She will never leave this house.
This thought alone circles in her head as she sits folded in the center of the bed, listening to the walls as night thickens.
The sedatives move like diluted slurry in her veins, and she is still so bone-achingly tired she could lie down and fall back to sleep.
Not yet. She must hold out till Bren comes in.
In the nursery, Jude is shooting toy cars down a ramp fashioned out of old cereal boxes while Bren digs in the dresser for clean flannel pajamas and picks out a storybook.
That’s how she left them, knowing there will be no meltdown at the offense of new pajamas or the fact his mother isn’t with him.
She watched Bren toss Jude onto the woodland bed with an explosion noise and then swoop down to tickle him until he couldn’t breathe for laughing.
His face was flushed with delight, his stomach rounded from dinner.
This man has stolen her son.
Jude January.
She won’t let it happen.
If she picks Jude up and tries to walk out the front door, would the house even let her leave? It has closed in on her, narrowing until she is a thing squeezed between the floorboards. Trapped.
She pulls up the old T-shirt of Bren’s that she slipped on and flattens her hands to her belly, her skin feverishly hot and the baby quiet in sleep.
If she can mitigate the damage, draw Bren back to her and lull him with teary explanations of how she’s stressed and sick and none of her hysteria meant anything, then he will relax his grip on Jude. She’ll snatch up her son and go.
Except, she has no money, no car, no job.
Everything she owns now is in the January name: a gift from him, bought by him.
Terror leaves her shaky, because she did this to herself, she wanted someone to sweep her off her feet and take care of everything.
Bren trotted back to America as a pleased golden retriever with a dead bird in his mouth, and somehow she thought it romantic. What the fuck is wrong with her?
Even if she did run away, he could drag her back.
She carries his property inside her.
There is no going to the police, both because she can’t afford them looking into her and she knows how she’d sound. What are her husband’s offenses? Well, sir, he’s made my son like him better than me, and he won’t believe me that our house’s walls are bleeding.
She had looked in on them in the bath, Jude splashing around the tub, Bren sprawled on the floor accepting plastic teacups of bubbles and making nom-nom sounds at Jude’s demand.
Purple fingerprint bruises marked Jude’s prominent little ribs.
She’d done that to him. It’s her fault, too, the way she can count each rib bone like ladder rungs.
In the dark of her bedroom, Elodie tries to even out her breathing.
Her hair is a sheath of midnight around her, grown so long it touches the bedsheets, lank and lifeless.
She can’t think. Her sinuses are on fire and claws have reached into her skull to scoop it clean, packing the empty space with rusted nails and twigs and bird bones.
This is the house’s doing, she knows it now.
Things drag themselves from the walls to cut their teeth on her at night, to hover over her, tying knots in her hair and stuffing cotton wool down her throat and waiting until they can hold her under—
Stop. Those are just bad dreams that linger after she wakes.
She should never have told Bren anything about what the house is doing to her, that it’s tormenting her with wretched, murderous games. Because that’s what all of this is.
It’s always been shaped like a game.
To win, she must be the lonesome, enigmatic girl who Bren fell hopelessly in love with, who is full of wry quips and supple limbs and a beautiful mouth. Be lovely, be mysterious. Enchant him. There is no surviving herself otherwise.
A languid throb keeps up behind her eyes and she digs fingernails into her arm to stay awake. This is how she is when Bren finally comes into the room, pulling off his shirt before he’s closed their bedroom door. Then he slides an old, ornate key from his pocket and locks it.
A roar builds behind her eyes, red flecks encroaching on her vision until she thinks she will lunge from the bed and snarl at him. Snatch for the key. Howl her feral fury.
But she stays quiet, demure, accepting.
He doesn’t look at her on the way to the en suite, and when he comes out, showered and in old sweats, he flops onto his side of the bed without a word. Darkness pulls close, muddy with suffocation. He snaps off his light.
The curve of his back is to her, ribbed sweater shirt riding up to show the hard line of hip bone.
She slides across the bed and presses herself along his back, her fingers tracing gentle circles on the nape of his neck.
Any other night, he’d roll over immediately and start kissing her, his hunger stoked. Now he does nothing.
Panic threads through her veins and it takes effort not to tremble.
“Can we talk?” Her voice is small in the dark, threadbare and narrow, something he could wrap around his fingers and reel her in if only he wanted to. “I’m sorry about before. I’m not well. Like you said. I’m— I should see the midwife again. Make sure the baby is okay.”
This should pique his worry, have him respond with fretful care over any potential risk to the child in her womb. But still he keeps his back to her.
“Did Jude go down okay?” There’s a catch in her voice.
“Yes, actually. I told him nothing scary would go into the nursery tonight. Which is true, because his mother is staying in here, with me, and can’t terrorize him.”
Elodie’s stomach twists. “You have this so backward. I check on him at night. I—I make sure he’s safe. What if he cries out?”
“Then I’ll go to him.”
“You won’t be fast enough. The walls are—”
“Jesus, Elodie.” He rolls over, and she lies still as he props himself up on an elbow and leans over her.
The wild tremor of her heartbeat means nothing, she tells herself. She is not scared of him.
“I’ll take you to see Oliver, all right? We’ll get a medical plan together on how to … deal with this.”
Understanding distills with brutal swiftness, how her life will look if he decides she needs medicating, silencing. How somehow it is his decision, not hers. She is struggling to remember when she last decided something.
She takes his hand and gently puts it between her legs. His eyes close for a brief minute, and then he pulls away.
“We’re not doing this.” There’s something raw and scratchy in his voice. “It’s really fucking unhealthy, Elodie. It fixes nothing.”
“I don’t need you to fix me. I need you to listen.” Ice has layered itself through her chest and she fights it, the panic, the fear, the need to claw her way inside him and make him believe her. The only other choice is closing her eyes and pretending none of this is happening.
It is almost more horrible to consider it isn’t happening.
It’s all in her head.
She is struggling to hold on to thoughts, not to slide sideways and puddle on the ground like old, purpled blood pooled in a corpse.
Shadows trace the dark line of his jaw and the tilt of his mouth holds only sadness, his eyebrows drawn together in concern. He leans down and kisses her, slow and tender.
She kisses him back, hungry, panicked.
“I love you,” he says. “I’ll love you through anything. We’ll work this out together. I’ll fix you.”
It meant to be a comfort. It is a threat.
A tear traces down her cheek and collects in the corner of her mouth.