holding the baby in the air above his face. In the corner beside him is a woman facing the wall. She is dripping wet, as if she has crawled out of the fjord, her clothes old and bedraggled. Aurelia opens her mouth to ask what she’s doing here, but Tom’s face is bright with fury, a vein in his temple pulsing as he begins to shout.
“Shut up, you little bitch! Shut up!”
Coco’s mouth is wide open in a prolonged wail, tears streaming down her face and her legs wheeling frantically in the air. And then he shakes her. His hands squeeze Coco’s sides and he shakes her like a doll, and Aurelia cannot get to her feet fast enough to stop him from shaking her three, four, five times, her head bobbing dangerously.
Aurelia is on her feet, the room spins and sways as she lurches toward him, and with a yell he half drops, half throws Coco to the ground. The woman in the corner doesn’t move. Aurelia holds her arms out to catch her, but she trips on something—a toy tractor or a pram, she’s not sure—and falls, and even before she reaches the ground she knows she can’t reach Coco.
Coco hits the ground a moment before Aurelia reaches her and is still.
She finds herself on the floor, gasping for air, on her elbows in a half crawl. Gaia is standing over her. Somewhere in the distance is the sound of crying. She scans the room for Coco, but she isn’t there, and neither is Tom or the woman. In a great rush she realizes that Coco is still in the basket, and the air around her ionizes with the slow knowledge that she fell asleep again, that she was dreaming, that the terrible thing that happened didn’t happen.
Her heart is still pounding in her throat and her shirt is soaked with sweat. “Are you OK?” Gaia asks timidly. She watches as her mother pulls herself to her feet with all the stiffness of a skeleton stepping out of its grave and lumbers toward Coco, scooping her gently out of the basket.
“Is everything all right?” a voice says from the doorway. Aurelia screams, an involuntary reaction to the sight of Tom. She is trembling, crying, and when he tries to take Coco from her, she pulls away from him, holding the baby as though she’s just been attacked.
“Aurelia?” he says, reaching out to her a second time, but she doesn’t respond. He looks down at Gaia as though she might reveal the cause of her mother’s hysteria. But Gaia merely stares up at him, her eyes wide, seeing the gulf widening between her parents, and her mother fragmenting like a scattered jigsaw.
Aurelia keeps her distance from Tom, as though he’s radioactive or clutching a live grenade, and paces unevenly by the window, which is beginning to blister with rain. Six months ago they stood in this very room, emptied of its contents and blooming with fungi. They looked out at the view of the woods and endless sky and glittering fjord. Let’s buy it, Aurelia said. It’s perfect. And so he did.
“Aurelia?” he tries again, summoning all his patience. “What’s going on?”
When she doesn’t answer he feels a flush of rage. His own words boil in his throat. Just like his father. Finally she turns to answer, but he has already walked out of the room, slamming the door so hard behind him that the wood cracks in protest.
17
words that boil, wounds that burn
NOW
What do you mean, ‘rumors’?” Tom asks, angling his head up at Clive.
“Look, I know what you’re going to say—”
“No, you don’t,” Tom throws back. “You haven’t a clue what I’m going to say.”
Clive stares at his friend. Lately he’d like nothing more than to punch him in the face. Always so defensive, always so quick to turn things into an argument. Working with Tom these days is like trying to be a bloody contortionist, twisting himself into knots over every little setback that arises with this never-ending build just to get Tom to do what is required. Clive sucks air in through his nostrils and chooses his words carefully.
“The construction team have concerns,” he says.
“What about?” Tom gives him a flat stare. “I’ve paid them up front. What the hell do they have to be concerned about?”
This is news to Clive. He swallows hard. Paid them up front. Tom will sink this business if he continues running it like a toddler.