The Push, Ashley Audrain [popular novels TXT] 📗

clean up?’ I asked. I took Sam for his bath without waiting for your answer.

I read her a story in our bed, Sam wiggling between us with his bunny, Benny.

‘One more,’ she said when I finished the book. Always one more. I sighed and gave in. Sam tapped his fingers on his nearly empty bottle. More, more. You were changing into your jeans at the end of the bed.

‘Mom, Sammy wants more milk.’

‘Going somewhere?’

‘Back to the office,’ you said. ‘I have to finish a proposal tonight.’

‘Daddy, you have to tuck me in!’

You leaned down to kiss all three of us. One by one. With purpose. Sam held up his empty bottle.

‘Mom will tuck you in, sweetheart. I have to run. Be a good girl for her, okay?’

‘Sammy still needs more milk!’ said Violet again.

‘Love you,’ you said, to all of us.

I sat on the edge of her bed to say good night. She had been so good lately and yet I never told her this. I had started to take this new, peaceful normal between us for granted. I could barely remember a time before Sam. I could barely remember the mother I had been. Motherhood is like that – there is only the now. The despair of now, the relief of now.

Her face was maturing, a preview of what she would look like as a teenager. Her lips were round and plump, and I imagined her kissing someone. Loving someone. She had changed in those months since Sam was born. Or maybe it was me who had changed. Maybe I could finally see who she was.

‘Violet? I want you to know what a very good girl you’ve been lately. You’ve been kind and gentle with Sam. You’ve been helpful. And you’ve been a good friend at school. I’m proud of you.’

She was quiet, thinking. I turned out her night-light and leaned down to kiss her, and she let me.

‘Good night. Sleep tight.’

‘Do you love baby Sam more than me?’ Her words paralyzed me. I thought of you. Of what she might have overheard you say.

‘Honey. Of course not. I love you both the same.’

She closed her eyes, pretending to sleep, and I watched her lids flutter.

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.

40

‘She’s just been so good lately, you know? It came from nowhere.’

We were in bed the next morning, early, Sam on the floor with his