Chapter 39

39

I didn’t know she was in his room until she spoke.

The nights had been ours for months on end, more months than the baby books said was normal. I woke urgently at the slightest noise from Sam’s crib, as though a rocket had launched in my ear. In the dark I stood, shifting my hips from side to side, the rhythm, like the scent of my skin and the taste of my milk, the way he knew it was me. Go to sleep, sweet boy. I would brush my lips on the fuzz of his head, careful not to rouse him. On the particular night I’m remembering, he barely nursed, wanting only the feeling of my nipple filling his mouth. The comfort. The sound machine hissed, a fusion of noises that were meant to be the ocean.

“Put him down,” she told me. I gasped and startled the baby in my arms.

“Violet! Why are you in here?”

“Put him down.”

She spoke calmly, directly. As though it were a threat. I sensed she was somewhere near the closet; I couldn’t see her in the faint spread of light from under the closed door. I turned slowly, trying to catch a different perspective of the room, and waited, letting my eyes find the nursery’s objects in the dark. Her voice came from the other end this time.

“Put him down.”

“Go back to bed, honey. It’s three in the morning. I’ll come in and rub your back.”

“I won’t,” she said slowly, her voice low, “until you put him down.”

My chest began to tighten—that feeling again, the creep of anxiety. It was back in an instant, like she’d snapped her fingers to wake me up from her spell. That tone used to haunt me. I can’t go there again with you, I thought, my mouth dry. Why had she been in here? What was she doing?

I’d huffed to show her how silly she was being, but I listened to her.

I laid Sam in his crib and felt around the mattress for Benny. He always held it near his face. I couldn’t find it.

“Violet, do you know where Benny is?”

She tossed it at me and left the room. She’d taken the bunny from his crib. She’d been watching him while he slept.

She’d been so close to him.

I closed the door behind me and followed her to her room.

I sat softly on the edge of her bed. I slipped my hand up the back of her strawberry-patterned pajama top onto her perfect, silky skin. She loved to have her back rubbed. By you.

“Don’t touch me. Get away from me.”

I pulled my hand out of her shirt. “Have you been in there before to watch Sam sleep at night? Do you do that sometimes?”

She didn’t answer.

My heart raced as I went back to our bed, slowing at Sam’s closed door to make sure he was quiet. I was ashamed of myself for the thoughts that came to my mind. And then: I could bring him to my bed. I could make sure he’s safe. Just for tonight. Just this once.

We were past this. We were supposed to be past this.

I took my phone out of the bedside table drawer and I looked at photos of her until you stirred gently beside me, bothered by the blue light. I was looking to find something in her face, but I didn’t know what. I went to Sam’s room and brought him back into bed with me.