Set it down. That was what her father wanted. The lanugo had long been a memory she carried inside her, but Seth’s death and her own impending motherhood awakened it again. Would such sadness also enter her, make her do something awful? Was she even fit to be a mother? Some nights she swore she still sensed the lanugo, a second, bristling existence under all that smooth skin. Fur and wildness. When the moon swelled, she imagined shucking off this outer layer and padding on all fours through the woods. A wulvas heo. There she smelled snow in the sharp cold wind, heard rabbits shudder deep in their warrens at the sound of her coming. This was how she had come to think of herself. Look inside the fierce brown eyes her mother gave her, and you would see she was still a wolfgirl all these years later.
SHARDS
Logan was already gone by the time she came downstairs the next morning, but he had left Clara a to-do list, and number one on the list was the dishes, which she hadn’t washed in a few days. He had underlined this task so she would understand how important it was, a plea for a return to normalcy. Logan detested messes, and the entire kitchen had a sour smell, the same smell on her skin. Clara tore the list into pieces that she left for him on the table and then set to making cinnamon rolls, Pillsbury, in the oven.
She ate the rolls on the living room couch and licked frosting from her fingertips. The shades were drawn against the day; outside big trucks lumbered past on the one road leading out of town, rattling the glass in the window casings. All the world on the move now, headed elsewhere. Clara sank into the cushion, a pillow propped behind her to support her back, her mind thick with sugar and dough.
The night before Logan had awakened her past midnight. “This is killing me,” he said in a drained voice.
“Logan?” His body curled under the blankets in a fetal position, so she touched his hip. “What are you talking about?”
He grumbled something more, still fast asleep she realized, talking to someone is in his dreams. Clara couldn’t be sure she’d heard him right.
She reached under the covers, found his wrist, felt the erratic wingbeats of his pulse under his skin. “What’s killing you?” she whispered, afraid of what he meant, not wanting to wake him up. She had not slept well the rest of the night and a nap was in order this morning. She shut her eyes and drifted off on the couch.
When she woke, Logan was standing over her, his brow furrowed. He must have found the to-do list she ripped into pieces. “Come eat,” he said, “I made soup.”
“I didn’t even hear you come home. Wow, I was really out of it.”
Logan didn’t say anything as they sat at the table and mumbled grace and set to the soup, which still steamed. Silence and clinking silverware. How could she be hungry again so soon? While she ate her soup, she searched her mind for the right words, something inane about the weather to break the tension.
“I wish you wouldn’t eat like that,” Logan said.
She had been enjoying her meal until then, the hot salty broth. “Like what?”
“That slurping noise. You don’t have to slurp it like a dog. Watch.” He dipped a spoon into the bowl, lifted out some soup, and put it past his pinched lips.
“Jesus Christ on a stick. Is that how you’re supposed to eat soup?”
Logan set his spoon down, his face reddening. “Don’t mock me, Clara. I just wish you wouldn’t smack your lips all the time. I wish you would chew with your mouth shut.”
Her eyes grew hot.
“Oh, don’t. Not this again.”
“Don’t what?” As if she could stop it.
“It’s been this same weepy self-pity ever since Seth shot himself. You know what, Clara? That kid was a little shit. You wouldn’t believe the stories I’ve heard. He was a terror. This whole town is glad he’s dead.”
She got up before she said something she regretted and carried the remains of her bowl into the kitchen, not wanting to look at him. She turned on the water. She didn’t mean to do it at first, but that china bowl was slick in her hands. The first one dropped with a crack into the hard stainless-steel sink and shattered into