by Cole McCade
She fingered a straggling lock of white-blonde hair, its tip curling against the upper swell of her breast, and tried to remember what she’d looked like when her hair had been chestnut-brown and wholesome and she’d been a good little girl, a good little wife.
She couldn’t.
Pulling herself from her reflection, she filled the bathtub. It was smaller than the one she remembered in the master bedroom, but still felt like sinking into a swimming pool when she settled against the side and let the boiling hot water close over her. Sliding down the wall, she stretched out on her back until only her face floated above the surface. Her hair tickled and wafted around her like kelp at the bottom of the sea. Like this, the household sounds of Jacob and the nanny were just faint muted noises beyond the roar of water filling her ears. She drifted, weightless and warm and timeless. As long as she stayed like this, she could pretend that when she woke in the morning she wouldn’t be hitting the reset button on her life, as if the last four years had never happened.
Maybe they shouldn’t have. Every time she thought of that cold white room Elijah slept in, she thought she should have been here to stop that. Should have been here to take those messy pictures with the Spaghetti-Os smeared all over Elijah and herself. Should have been here to spoil him with bright colorful toys, and play with him, and make his big plastic Godzilla go rawr while he squealed and giggled and clapped his little hands together. And maybe she couldn’t have loved Jacob as her husband, but she could have learned to love him as Elijah’s father.
God, she’d fucked up. She’d fucked up so damned bad, and the worst part was that she was selfish enough that part of her still didn’t regret it. Part of her still wanted to run away, and never look back.
Her next breath choked on a sob. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and let herself sink, submerging completely. As long as she was surrounded by water, sinking deep, drowning, she wasn’t crying.
It was just another drop in the ocean.
She stayed under until she ran out of air, then bobbed up to the surface, eyes opening while she stared up at the ceiling lights, just blurry prisms of glowing color past the droplets on her lashes. Formless things that didn’t have to mean anything at all. The water had started to cool by the time a small, timid knock filtered through from the hallway. Not Jacob, then. She forced herself to move, feeling like a golem prying free from its clay bed, and climbed out of the bath. She’d soaked long enough to wash away the stink of the police station.
She didn’t think a million baths could wash away the stink of her own guilt.
“I’m coming,” she called as she wrung her hair over the tub, then wrapped herself up in a massive fluffy towel so large it fell to her knees. Unlocking the bathroom, she padded to the bedroom door.
Even though she knew it wasn’t Jacob—he would never knock so nervously in his own home—she still hesitated to open the door more than a crack until she saw pale skin and red hair and wide, nervous green eyes. The girl. The pert, pretty little nanny. Leigh really should ask her name, but right now she wasn’t feeling up to being proper and polite and playing the Lady of the House.
The nanny clutched a folded stack of clothing to her chest. When Leigh said nothing, the girl blurted, “Mr. van Zandt said you needed something to wear. I’ll get your things down from the attic in the morning, but until then…” She fidgeted with the edges of the clothes, then thrust them out to Leigh. “They’ll be a bit big on you, but they should be fine to sleep in.”
Leigh kept one hand on her towel, but gathered the garments to her chest with the other. A little scared knot she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge was even there unraveled. Deep down she’d loathed the idea of sleeping in something of Jacob’s, breathing in his scent until it wrapped around her in a stranglehold. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“Look, I…” The girl worried at her lip and fretted her fingers together. “I don’t know what to say.”
What did you say to the mother of your ward after you foiled her kidnapping attempt? Leigh offered a faint smile. “It’s okay.” She leaned out into the hall, peeking toward Elijah’s room. “Is he still awake?”
“He is.” The girl instantly relaxed as she glanced down the hall, her eyes warming. Did she love Elijah, Leigh wondered? “He had a lot of questions about you.” A quick, shy smile flitted across her lips. “He may not show it, but he’s really excited to have a Mommy.”
“I should probably do something about answering those questions. May I see him?”
The girl blinked. “What? Oh—oh, of course! You don’t…you don’t have to ask—”
“That’s going to take some getting used to,” Leigh said dryly, and grinned. “Excuse me while I change.”
The girl stammered something, then nodded and nearly scampered off. Such a nervous thing, Leigh thought, and watched her disappear into the adjoining room before she shut the door to change.
The nanny’s pajamas were a bit large on her—a shapeless tank top and a pair of striped, mousy pajama pants Leigh had to roll at the waist and cuff at the ankles to even keep them on—but they were soft and comfortable and made her feel a bit more human. A little less surreal, when this day had started with her waking up in Gabriel’s arms and ended in this house, with the bruises of handcuffs on her wrists and Jacob’s mausoleum of things rising around her, surrounding her with this awkward strangeness of a life that was trying to swallow her into its quicksand while ignoring that she no longer fit into the place she’d occupied before.
If she ever had.
She stepped out of the bedroom; the faint noise of the news and wan white flicker-flash of the TV spilled into the hallway and splashed up against the walls. She nearly tiptoed across the carpet, soft pile between her bare toes. Over the couch she could barely see the back of Jacob’s head, and she skittered quickly to Elijah’s room, feeling like a child trying not to get caught sneaking around after bedtime.
She opened the door without knocking and slipped just inside, easing the door closed behind her, but came no farther. Elijah sat upright in bed in perfectly tailored fuzzy flannel pajamas that made him look like a little miniature man, so very serious. The Day the Crayons Quit rested open in his lap. He lifted his head, staring at her with large, dark eyes, his expression so carefully blank that it cut her heart to ribbons.
“Elijah?” she asked softly. “Hi, honey. Can I come in?”
He considered gravely, then nodded. “Okay.”
Leigh stepped closer to the bed, moving slowly. Approaching Elijah was like trying not to spook a tiny, adorable sparrow into taking flight, and she settled gingerly on the edge of the bed next to him. He didn’t flinch away, at least. She couldn’t have scared him that much.
“So it’s been a pretty exciting day for you, hasn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded and set his book down, picking at one of the pages and watching her curiously. “Why did you try to take me away?”
“Sometimes…” The words caught in Leigh’s throat. How could she explain in a way he would understand? He was only four, but children were painfully perceptive—and she didn’t want to lie. Not to him. “Sometimes you love someone so much that you want to have them all to yourself, and not share them with anyone.” She tried a smile. “I love you that much, Elijah. I didn’t want to share you.”
“Are you really my Mommy?”
“I am. You grew inside me right here.” She rested a hand over her stomach. “Nice and close to my heart.”
“Then why did you go away?”
God, he knew right how to rip her guts out, pointed and direct questions with no filter, and the innocence to make them nothing but rawly honest. “That’s…that’s complicated, love. It’s so complicated, but I promise it’s not because I don’t love you. I love you so, so much. And I’ve been watching over you all this time.” She stood. “Give me a minute. I want to show you something. I’ll be right back.”
She slipped back out and dashed down the hall before she could
talk herself out of this, sparing only a quick glance to make sure Jacob hadn’t looked up from his absorption in the TV. He was so motionless she thought he might be asleep. Good. Let him stay that way. This wasn’t for him.
In the guest room, she rummaged in her backpack until she came up with the camera, then hurried back to Elijah’s room. As she sat down on the edge of the bed again, she pulled up the gallery while he watched curiously.
“Look,” she said, and turned the screen so he could see: a moment on a sunny afternoon, his hair blowing back in dark tangles as he kicked his legs on the swing to soar higher and higher.
His eyes widened in that dramatic way only children could manage. “That’s me.”
“It is. I would come and watch you play almost every day.”
She paged through a few more photos, but when—after a few moments of watching—he reached for the camera, she let him have it. His little fingers pushed at the navigation buttons to scroll through just a few of the many hundreds of pictures. Hundreds of memories, of moments, that meant so much to her but weren’t the same as having him so close she could smell the sweet candy softness of his scent and hear his voice, with that quiet, too-adult, oddly precise way of speaking that was so uniquely Elijah.
He stopped on a much older picture. This one in the back yard, taken from a distance, the angle cock-eyed when she’d had to hold her phone over the top of the fence. He’d still been young enough to crawl, and the picture showed him scampering on all fours across the grass in a onesie, his hair a thatched black cloud dotted with dandelion fluffs.
“I was really little,” he said. “You were there?”
“I was. I’m like your fairy godmother, baby.”
“Like in Cinderella?”
She laughed. “Just like in Cinderella.” She watched him page through a few more images, then asked, “May I hug you, Elijah?”
He stopped flicking through the photos and looked at her, his little brows wrinkling together, and she wondered if somewhere behind those eyes he was measuring her against the Stranger Danger Meter like a smart boy should. Then he said, “Okay.”
Her heart was a strange machine inside her chest, pumping frenetically until blood rushed through her—too hot, too dizzy with the fear that somehow she’d fuck this all up just by touching him. But she gently tugged the camera away from him and set it down, then wrapped her arms around him and gathered him close, moving slowly because God, if she scared him or somehow hurt him or did anything wrong, she would break.
He held awkwardly stiff for a moment, then shifted to tuck against her, almost crawling into her lap. And when his slim arms slipped up around her neck and the cuff of his sleeve brushed her jaw and his warmth bled into her until he was like her own personal bright little sun held, she closed her eyes against a sweet sting of tears. Being able to hold him again pulled deep inside her, with a simple pleasure she hadn’t felt since the doctor had put that tiny little squealing bundle in her arms; in that moment she’d forgotten the hours of pain, and had breathed, Hello. Hello, Elijah.
“Hello,” she whispered thickly. “Hello, Elijah.”
He only snuggled deeper into her with a soft sound. Leigh tightened her grip fiercely and tucked his hair back in that way she’d missed doing for so long. Four years. She’d missed four years because she’d been struggling to seal that hole inside her. And maybe Elijah didn’t fill that yawning space. Maybe nothing would; maybe it was just part of being human, this emptiness, this wanting for something she couldn’t articulate, couldn’t name.
But he fit inside her in a way she hadn’t wanted to admit she needed, and she wasn’t going to be stupid enough to let him go again.
She kissed his hair, then rubbed her cheek to its soft silkiness. He made a curious noise, then tilted his head back and looked up at her.
“Why did Daddy call you trashy?”
Leigh couldn’t stop her startled laugh. “You’re a good speller.” She sniffled and pried one hand away from him to rub at her blurring eyes. “Sometimes Daddy says things he doesn’t mean, sweetheart.”
“What does it mean?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything.” She smiled. “I hope I didn’t upset you by shouting in the car.”
He shook his head. “It…” He trailed off. His eyes drooped and his words slurred as he started to drift off mid-sentence in that way only children could, switch flipped from on to off in a matter of seconds. “It’s okay. Daddy shouts all the time.”
“That’s really not okay.” Leigh frowned. Jacob had always been a bit loud—shouting about football, yelling at the screen, raging about work, but one thing he’d never done was shout at her. No…with her he would get strangely, dangerously quiet, that dead stillness that came just before the shocks of an earthquake or the explosion of a volcano. She wasn’t sure what was worse: the idea of him turning that on Elijah, or the idea of him raising his voice often enough that her son would say something about it.
She’d ask Jacob about it tomorrow, she thought. She would. She was going to be Elijah’s mother, and that meant…that meant being his mother, and finding out what kind of father Jacob had been all these years, from more than just glimpses through a townhouse window.
Delicately, she eased Elijah from her lap and tucked him back against the sheets. He settled against the pillows with his fist curled up near his face and the dark sweep of his lashes making feathery dashes against his cheeks, while she pulled the covers up over his shoulders.
“Goodnight, Elijah,” she whispered.
“’nini,” he mumbled, but he was already gone, breaths escaping in a sleeping sigh.
She lingered to watch his slow, even, peaceful breathing for a few moments longer, then turned the bedside lamp off, leaving only the blue and gold glow of the starry nightlight plugged into the wall. She kept quiet as a little mouse as she left the camera on the pillow, crept from the room, and pulled the door closed behind her without even the smallest click of the latch.
Only to nearly scream as she turned to find Jacob standing over her.
She jumped back with a squeak, clutching her hands against her chest. He didn’t move. His hair was a disheveled mess, his face oddly dead, but there was something dark and frustrated and furious and helpless in his eyes; something accusatory and vengeful. Something that made her thighs prickle cold and tight, with the sort of fear that left her body feeling too light and her head disconnected from her shoulders.
She tried to control her rapid breathing. He watched her flatly, that stillness settling between them like a promise. A warning sign, and suddenly she missed Gabriel, needed Gabriel. He was nothing like Jacob. Gabriel’s stillness, his silence, were a matter of restraint, consideration, self-control.
Jacob’s was just a measure of the distance to the edge, that verge where his control would snap.
“Goodnight, Leigh,” Jacob said. Cool. Quiet.
Deadly.
He brushed past her, toward the stairs. She stared after him, trembling and sick enough that her mouth flooded with sour saliva.
“Yeah.” She shivered and wrapped herself up tight, hands digging into the prickles of goosebumps rising on her arms to press against her finger-pads. “Goodnight.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
“I’M STAYING HOME FROM WORK today.”
Leigh looked up from her barely-touched plate. Breakfast had been a tense, silent affair; the nanny had knocked politely at her door, then vanished before Leigh could even drag herself out of bed. She’d spent a restless night. Every time she’d closed her eyes, she’d seen the glassy deadness of Jacob’s eyes—and that stare that promised she’d done something terrible, and he would find a way to punish her for it. The worst part was the ugliness inside her that said she deserved it. She deserved whatever he decided to do to make her suffer, for what she’d done to him.
And what about what he did to me?
It wasn’t that black and white. It just wasn’t. Gabriel had been right. There was neither
good nor evil, hero nor villain. Just two people struggling to figure out how to be, when their rough edges didn’t always fit together. She wasn’t wrong for that, even if she’d taken some wrong steps in figuring it out. She’d hurt him. He’d hurt her too, in ways he’d never understand, never even be able to see. They shouldn’t be thinking about punishing each other. They should be thinking about Elijah, who currently sat in his chair on his little booster seat, picking at his Cheerios as listlessly as Leigh had picked at her eggs, as if he’d tuned into the undercurrent of silence at the table.
That silence didn’t break until Jacob finally lowered his newspaper, and folded the stock and finance section next to his plate. He met Leigh’s eyes across the perfect white tablecloth. He had that look again. That patient indulgent look, but underneath it the quiet was waiting, seething, growing. He wouldn’t let it out. Not now. Not when Elijah was sitting there, all ears; not when at his back, the nanny stood over the sink with the dishes clacking and the water running.
“I know it’s going to be a difficult adjustment for you, baby girl.” His smile was quick and oily. “I thought we could all spend the day together, especially with your parents coming.”
“Sure,” she said, when what she really meant was you scare me. When you smile like that, you scare me. “Sounds great.”
He studied her with a sort of insectoid calculation. She looked blankly over his shoulder until he stood, tossing his napkin down over his empty plate.
“Your clothes are in the master bedroom. Make yourself decent.”
He walked out without looking back. Leigh didn’t get up until she heard the door to the study close, sharp and forceful. As she stood, Elijah looked up, watching her with wide eyes full of questions she couldn’t answer. She pressed a kiss to the top of his head.
“Finish your cereal, baby.”
“Okay.”
She glanced at the nanny, just long enough to make sure the girl was watching Elijah, then dragged herself upstairs. That sick feeling was back, growing deeper with every step she rose, until her mouth was full of frothy spittle and she was ready to gag on it. Maybe he’d changed the bedroom, too. Maybe—
