49

49

J ust as Belinda is about to read a prayer from her journal, the front door opens. A cold blast of air shoots through the room.

"The car won't start," Connor grumbles. Iris still crying.

she won't let you leave with the baby

Flora pops up from the table. "See? This is happening, Connor. This is real."

"What's real?" His eyes slant in the way that has become so familiar to her. The look of doubt and condescension.

"The car won't start," Flora says, "because she won't let you leave. You should be here for this. Iris should be here for this."

Connor's head falls backward in an exaggerated gesture. "The car won't start, Flora, because something is wrong with the engine or the battery. It's not because the spirit of your dead mother is willing me to stay."

He looks to the others, who say nothing in response. "Really?" he asks them. "You all believe that? You all believe that some ghost is holding me here? That some ghost is responsible for a bad alternator?"

"We do not know what we do not know," Belinda says, and Connor immediately rolls his eyes.

"Okay," he says, "sure. Can't argue with that." He pulls out his phone. "I'm calling a cab."

Iris cries in his arms.

"She needs to eat," Flora says. "I can feed her."

Because even though the blisters are burning and her eye is blurry and swollen and she is running out of time, a thought has come to her suddenly. This might be the last time she sees her daughter. What if the séance doesn't work? What if she can't rid her body of her mother? If that's the case, it's all over for her. And so she wants one more moment with her baby.

"Fine," Connor says. "But stay here where I can see you both."

Iris fits just so in Flora's arms. She was custom built for this embrace. Flora smells the top of her head, filling her nostrils with the newborn scent. She begins to prep Iris's bottle when she hears her father's voice from his designated spot at the coffee table.

"You should stay, Connor," he says. Connor looks up at him, about to protest, when he sees Michael staring intently into the flame of the black candle on the low table. "Don't make the mistake I made. Don't walk away." He looks up at Connor, his eyes determined but also kind and understanding. "You see it. I know you see it. Your wife slipping away little by little. Every day there is less and less of her left. And you don't know why. It scares you, so you push her away. You push it all away because you don't have the answers. And you don't know what that means about who you are if this is something you can't solve." He looks at his own hands, inspecting the lines and wrinkles as if searching for some hidden message. "But if you walk out that door… then you will know who you really are. And you will struggle to live with that man for the rest of your life." He looks up again. "Trust me. I struggle every day."

The air is thick. A single tear paints Flora's cheek. Her father's pain is palpable. She instinctively holds Iris tighter.

Flora wonders, not for the first time, if her family would be better off without her. She could leave right now, and all their problems would be solved. She imagines kissing her daughter goodbye, then escaping her body, floating above it, looking down at her house from the frigid sky, higher and higher until the roof of her home is just a speck, until her problems and shortcomings and failures are too small to be seen.

Too small to have ever existed at all.

Flora feels Iris's chest rise and fall as her tiny lungs fill with air. Flora's own breath adjusts in response, calming as it matches Iris's rhythm. And she resolves to keep going. Because as long as this tiny human exists in the world, Flora knows it's a place worth fighting for.

She reaches for the bottle she prepped, now warm and ready. But when she brings it closer, her nose crinkles. It stinks of fermentation.

"Oh God," Flora says. "The formula must have gone bad."

Connor looks over and latches on to the distraction. "I'll open a new can," he says. Flora thinks maybe her father's words have resonated with her husband. Connor is rarely speechless.

When he has finished preparing a new bottle, he unscrews the top and sniffs to confirm that it's good. "Smells okay," he says.

He hands the bottle to Flora. And as he does, the very second Flora's fingers touch the outside of the bottle, the milk curdles. Chunks float around like a soupy cottage cheese. The color even shifts from a translucent white to a stained yellow. When she screws off the nipple again, a strong whiff of sour urine punches her nose.

oh my God I can't feed my baby I can't feed my own baby

"What the hell…" Connor stares.

Flora looks at him, scared. "We're out of time," she says.

He pries his eyes from the curdled milk to look at his wife. And finally, he says, "All right. Tell me what to do."