4 Years Ago
It is unthinkable to face the fact they must separate again with no way to ease the parting except to tear their hearts in half and stuff a throbbing piece in the other’s pocket. He will fly back to America. She will return to her damp garage.
After talking nonstop the last two days, a morose but comfortable quiet has settled between them as he drives his rental car toward her street. They toss dates back and forth—he could come out in six weeks, maybe four. He has his job, his house, his real life, after all.
His eyes are full of mournful agony every time he looks at her. “I miss you already. I’m sick with it.”
She knows they can’t sustain a life zipping between countries, that he will grow bored of the expense, of her.
He’s mentioned using the last of his inheritance from his parents on flights, though those funds are fast running out.
But still, this tentative nub of hope has begun flowering between her lungs, threading violets and roses through rib and bone until every time she sucks in a breath, she is filled with this tremulous excitement.
This is what hope tastes like.
And if he never comes back, then she still has part of him.
There’s no way to truly know, but when she flattens her hands against the toned muscles of her stomach, she imagines she can feel it in there, a kernel of life tucked deep in her womb.
Something woven from Bren’s blood and bone will be full of light.
She believes this with such fervent conviction it leaves her breathless.
She can’t survive a future that holds only her and Jude, both of them draining the life out of each other with a starvation the other will never satisfy. Now she has this.
“Next time, I’ll take you both somewhere,” he says. “I’ll plan something epic.”
Eventually, she will tell him the truth about the way Jude is, but not yet. They are still too new, her grip on him too uncertain.
When he pulls up at the curb in front of her parents’ house, he kisses her until neither of them can breathe.
“Let me carry your bags to the door, at least.” He rips off his seat belt.
“Isn’t your flight in two hours?”
“Eh, I still have plenty of time to check in.” He flashes her a mischievous grin and grabs her pathetic tiny suitcase from the back seat.
A dull lump settles in her stomach as she watches him take in the weed-choked lawn and decrepit house, shutters falling off the windows and the outdoor staircase discolored with age. At least he thinks she lives upstairs.
Elodie scoops her hair into a haphazard bun and smooths her black dress, one he bought for her. As long as he leaves before she goes inside, it will be fine. She walks briskly across the dead grass, and Bren ambles behind her with her suitcase.
She has this sudden, spiteful wish for her parents to glance outside and see the kind of rich, blue-eyed boy she has caught. To see she is worthy of being wanted, despite what they believe.
“Jude is upstairs with my parents,” she says. “Just leave my bag here.” The need to see her son again has begun to chew through her, this anxious craving to cuddle him and be sure he is unharmed, that he is safe.
She’s halfway up the stairs to the front door when Bren says, “Hey, Elodie? I think Jude’s in here.”
She whips around, her hand on the banister, annoyance a hot flash as she sees him peering through the singular dirty window into her garage. He isn’t supposed to see in there.
And then she registers what he said.
“No,” she says. “No, he’s … He’s upstairs with my parents.”
But she’s already tripping over herself as she flies back down the stairs and runs over to the old door at the side of the garage.
She twists the rust-speckled knob, growing frantic when it doesn’t turn and she has to dig the spare key out from under the mat.
She can hear it now: feet pattering, ragged breathing, and then a thump as a small body hits the door.
“Mama!” The voice is hoarse, high, terrified.
“Jude?” Elodie rattles the door. She can’t get it open. She can’t get it—
Bren’s hand is on hers, taking the key, fitting it in the lock and twisting while a frenetic roar fills Elodie’s ears.
The smell hits first. Ammonia and vomit. One step into the room, and all she can focus on is the destruction, the hurricane of clothes strewn across the floor and broken toys and knocked-over chairs and thrown bedding.
Then Jude is on her.
He claws up her legs, sobbing frantically, every breath a dry rasp as he starts shrieking. She snatches him to her chest, and he wraps arms and legs around her, his wails pitching higher as she cups his head and tries to soothe him.
She stares at the destroyed room while horrible understanding unfurls.
They left him down here. They locked the door and left.
A strangled sob rips from her throat as she sinks to her knees and tries to peel Jude off enough to check him over, but his screams have turned hysterical, and he clutches her in terror of being put down. Of being left.
“Baby, it’s … It’s okay. Mama’s got you. Mama’s here.” But her voice sounds too weak to pierce his hysteria. His skin burns, fever licking at her fingertips as she smooths the chaos of sweaty, matted curls from his eyes. Vomit and grot cakes his pajama shirt, his underwear stiff with dried urine.
Somewhere, a thousand miles away, Bren is speaking.
Tears blur her eyes as she slowly picks herself up, Jude wrapped in her arms. “Leave.”
“Elodie—”
“Just fucking leave.” She can’t undo what he’s seen. The despicable, rotten truth of her terrible life is now splattered between them like hot entrails. But she doesn’t have space inside her to care right now.
He needs to go so she can focus on Jude, clean him up, calm him down.
Hold him and hold him. This is all her fault.
She left him with people she knew hated him, hated her.
Clearly, her mother’s spite won over whatever sympathy her father retained for her, or maybe his love for her has withered to nothing by now.
Has Jude even eaten in this whole time? They hate him and they’re punishing him for what she did.
“No.” Bren shoulders into the garage, setting her bag down firmly and then striding to their dismal kitchenette.
Elodie sinks onto the edge of the mattress, ignoring how bad it smells, and keeps Jude tucked hard to her chest. Their hearts beat against each other, panicked and fast, and his crying begins to wane.
He’s exhausted, starving, sick. He has no energy for a full-blown meltdown when he’s been screaming for days.
Screaming and no one came for him.
Guilt is a monster devouring her whole. She presses her face into his curls as tears slip down her cheeks. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so, so sorry.”
Then Bren is back with a warm washcloth, and she takes it in shaking hands.
She makes a feeble attempt to wipe some of the dried vomit off Jude’s cheeks, but she’s crying too hard to see anything.
Bren blurs in front of her, and then he’s sitting on the mattress beside her, pulling both her and Jude into his arms. She presses her face to Bren’s shoulder and breathes him in, wanting—no, needing—his calm to soothe her.
“We have to call the police,” he’s saying, and there’s a fury in his voice she’s never heard. “This is … criminal. Did your parents just leave him down here alone? This is insane.”
Jude’s small fingers twist into her shirt, and he is so fragile in her arms. There is nearly nothing of him.
“I’ll take you to a hospital,” Bren says. “He’s burning up.”
“No.” Elodie wipes her eyes quickly. “I can’t call the police. I can’t tell anyone. Bren, you don’t understand. If anyone sees how I live, they’ll take Jude from me. I can’t—” Panic tips her voice high. “They’ll take him from me.”
“No one is taking him from us.” He glances around the room and it must have sunk in by now, how much she held back. How miserable and pathetic and stunted her life is, how her five-year-old is not normal.
When she gazes down at Jude, his thumb is in his mouth and he snuggles into her as his sobs turn to hiccupping coughs. He is near catatonic, his eyes half-lidded. This is the first time he’s wanted her with such intensity since he was born.
A harrowed knot in her belly unwinds and there is a wicked, unforgivable moment when she is almost happy.
When she looks up at Bren, her voice cracks. “You’ll miss your flight.”
“Fuck my flight,” Bren says. “I’m not leaving you two here. Actually, I’m not leaving you two at all. You’re coming home with me.”
She knows she should refuse, say this is too fast, remind herself they barely know each other—but how can she? Her life here is over. She knows it as she looks at the destroyed and trashed garage, at the traumatized terror Jude will feel every day he lives here.
She wants nothing more than to get away from the monsters upstairs who want her to suffer like they do.
“Okay,” she whispers, and Bren’s face breaks into a relieved smile. His eyes are so bright, she realizes he’s about to cry.
“Do you want to take any stuff?” he says. “You don’t have to. I’ll buy you anything. Everything.”
“Just my suitcase. And my…” She can’t think. “Legal papers. Jude doesn’t have a passport.”
“We’ll get a motel and figure it all out.”
She stands, swallowing hard. “I need to go upstairs for a minute.”
He catches her elbow. “But you don’t need—”
“Wait for me.” And then she’s pulling away from him, hoisting Jude onto her hip as she hurries out of the garage and upstairs.
No plan exists in her mind, just this throbbing, otherworldly rage that streaks across her vision. She is vengeance, she is a goddess of hate, and she shoulders through the dilapidated screen door and into the hovel of a kitchen.
The TV blares from the living room, and everything is covered in a tacky layer of grime.
A pot of curried soup boils on the stove, set to a low simmer, and the fact they’ve bestirred themselves to cook while locking up her son and drowning out his screams with the TV makes her see red.
Then an odd calmness settles over her, strange and detached.
She thinks about walking in there and yelling at them.
Smashing the TV. Losing her mind and seeing what they’d do. Whether they’d even react.
She presses her mouth to Jude’s soft, babyish cheeks and kisses him again and again. “Close your eyes.”
Her parents don’t even know she’s come upstairs.
It is such an easy thing to do, pulling the rat poison out from under the sink next to the bleach and carpet cleaners.
She rips open the packaging and pours half into the frothing soup.
The curry should be strong enough to cover any odd taste and her mother, at least, is usually high on the meds she takes to numb her grief anyway.
So Elodie pours in the rest.
She settles the lid back on the pot.
Jude’s face is buried against her. He wouldn’t understand anyway, what it is that she has done.
When she closes the screen door behind her, quiet so the hinges don’t squeak, she walks quickly down the stairs. Her heartbeat is a violent hurricane in her chest, yet she feels calm, steadied. She almost feels safe.
Bren is waiting, his eyes worried.
She walks right into his arms.