By mid-winter the war was already lost. The soldiers mustered rank and file, thin and slouching. For all their brave victories, they had suffered a defeat of morale. None of them had expected the war to rage quite so long, nor to drag as it had in the quiet between the screams of battle where a failing breath during the night was as devastating as any other grievous bodily wound.
Lieutenant Nameis should have been a Captain by now. Captain Casco had fallen three nights prior but the fighting hadn’t ebbed long enough for an official change in command. If Nameis had stopped for his moment of self congratulatory pomp, it would have been for his honour alone and likely soured the men against him. He couldn’t appear so callous, so he remained a lieutenant to no one but death.
Such was their endless struggle. A thing that now seemed pointless and surreal, an automatic routine of brutality for brutality’s sake, inuring one and all to the smell of blood and the slippery feel of aging entrails underfoot. Victory was now couched in the rush of novelty, of new violence that could be mistaken for creativity—art—to a mind that knew only pain.
On this particular day, the soldiers mustered again and Lieutenant Nameis walked the line and a trussed girl from a nearby village screamed to be released. She spoke the language of the enemy and that had been enough. Now she begged in her bastard tongue. Nameis couldn’t speak it himself. He had relied on Captain Casco for things like that. But he knew a few words from repetition alone.
“Eska! Molo Dalime!” Please. Have Mercy.
The soldiers were slouching, thin, starved for victory. Nameis owed it to them and the girl would provide.
—
I was too distracted to enjoy my meal. The tater tots were fine, I’m sure. Rachel’s Aioli was probably excellent. I had made the burgers and knew exactly what to expect from them. Sautéed shiitake mushrooms, melted double cream Brie, lean beef, arugula, a lemon zested Bernaise and a lightly toasted brioche bun. Sweet and bright and nutty and fatty, all in perfect balance that was perfectly lost on me.
I had stolen the recipe from a restaurant that we used to love. The first time we went, I had ordered the burger and Rachel had ordered something less memorable and halfway through we switched plates. Within a month, the waitstaff knew what she’d order ahead of time. And then we had Eddie and going out became a rarity.
During the first few years, my making her favorite burger at home would have made her wet. If Eddie was down for the night, we would have fucked quietly:, giggling and hushing and biting pillows like we were the kids and Eddie was a tenuously sleeping parent just down the hall.
Now, the burger smelled the same, tasted the same, but Rachel seemed lost in a staring contest with her wine glass as I watched Eddie with an uneasy knot in my stomach.
“You didn’t cook this right, Paul.”
I had been ‘Dad’ once and Eddie was far too young to be such a shit.
“It’s white bread, cheddar and a patty, Eddie. I made it how you—“
“No! You made it gray! It’s not supposed to be gray!”
Rachel shuddered as she always did when Eddie went from a simmer to a boil. Cooper’s face twisted into distress as his plastic spoon clattered against the tray of his high chair. A moment later he was wailing and Rachel looked wedged between despondency and tears.
“Stop fucking crying, Pooper! Wahh!—“
“Eddie! Enough!”
“—Waaahh! Waahhh!”
Rachel didn’t look anywhere in particular as she addressed the table. She didn’t make any real effort to be heard.
“I—I can’t. I’m sorry, honey. But—“
She stood, lifted Cooper into her arms and in a movement that seemed more reflex than thought out, reached for her wine glass. Her fingers were inches away from the stem as Eddie’s hand darted across the table and swiped it onto its side. The wine spilled, the glass shattered and Rachel deflated even more. Her eyes welled and Eddie stared at his mother—my loving wife—with complete indifference.
“I’m not cleaning that up, mommy.” Flat.
Rachel left crying and I felt hollow and the untended wine dribbled off the table to join a dozen other stains on a carpet that Rachel and I had chosen together. Then I watched as Eddie separated his burger into ragged halves. He dragged one through the puddle on the table. Held it up and watched the red wine drip from his meat and cheese and bread. Smiled.
“I’m full, Paul. Nameis and I are going to go and play.”
He lifted his toy leopard by the head and left me alone at a table with three uneaten meals. I was too tired to fight, too tired to insist, so I gathered the broken glass for the trashcan and mopped up the wine and thought of how the meals would taste if things were different.
—
“Every parent feels guilty, Paul. It doesn’t mean we’ve done anything wrong. But you know as well as I that children don’t come with an instruction book.”
Doctor Foster had a tone for public radio. A sleepy English drawl that might’ve been calculated to soothe. Rachel liked him. She’d say that one day, he just might say something useful, that all of his advice seemed pragmatic. But I saw him cynically, as the purveyor of a dream.
“I know why I feel guilty, Doc. And I know I haven’t done anything wrong, but every blog and podcast says that I have.”
“Do they?”
“They don’t tell children to change themselves. I’m the one with the responsibility to do something different so of course it’s my fault when Eddie does something—Jesus Christ—you know what? Just tell me how to feel nothing. Can you do that?”
“Why don’t you tell me about something specific that you’re having a problem with and we can work on that.” He smiled pleasantly, eyes patiently receptive. I loathed the man at times like this.
“He pissed on his brother two days ago. Rachel had just changed Cooper and Eddie waited for the first opportunity and pissed on him. Let’s work on that, Doc. Go ahead.”
Rachel squeezed my arm. I was being combative, I knew that, but I was annoyed. I was always annoyed. But I hadn’t always been annoyed. The thought made me sulk which might’ve been functionally as good as being cowed into a participatory mood.
“Rachel, how did you feel when Eddie did that?”
“Small.”
“Hmm. And Paul, do you think Eddie might have been feeling small as well?”
No. “I don’t know.”
Doctor Foster steepled his fingers and nodded as though doing an impression of a therapist. It was punchably theatrical and for the next ten minutes I all but checked out. He knew Eddie like his teachers did. A pleasant child, talkative and polite and inquisitive. Eddie always commented on differences in the office or in Doctor Foster’s appearance. I like the pattern on your socks, Doctor Foster. Are those new flowers in the front, Doctor Foster? They’re very beautiful. Doctor Foster probably thought we were crazy. Sometimes, I wondered it myself.
“Until next time, remember your homework: try to be present; work together—all of you—when you’re caring for Cooper. If Eddie feels included he won’t feel unattended. And keep journaling. Sometimes writing your feelings down is enough to assess them objectively. I know it’s helping Eddie, but it’s not just for him.”
—
There was no rape in war just as there was no murder. Lieutenant Nameis knew that fact, but it did nothing to make the screams less grating. The screams somehow persisted as something to nag at the ears even when the sight of blood became rote.
The enemy scout had bled plenty as the men had pulled him down onto the pike, but the blood no longer bothered Nameis. The way the man flailed and then squirmed and then twitched didn’t bother him either. Piked or cut down in battle, most men died the same: there was pain, then shock, then stillness. The process was one governed by biology. But the screams were individual. Born by psychology. They lacked the sameness that death did.
The girl had screamed. So had infantryman Cuddle Bunny after he had deigned to question Nameis’ humanity. If anything, Nameis had more humanity than most. He fought to protect something important. And he did it valiantly. And he was a leopard—decidedly inhuman, and yet bound to human ideals. Glory. Victory. Legacy.
The screams were human though. Disparate as his enemy. Born by a psychology of weakness. But Nameis was strong—too strong to be so affected by something as ever present as a scream. And if violence could be art, why couldn’t screams be music? Desperation and fear and agony all weaving together into something melodic.
Sergeant Bluey had reported the capture of two enemies that morning. Useless as prisoners, but as instruments…
Nameis felt like humming for the first time since the war had begun. He trotted past an orderly row of pikes—his old gallery of sloughing flesh and heavy bones. It wasn’t far to the pillow nook where the prisoners were kept. But pillows were soft, and at this moment, what Nameis desired most was a hard place with pleasant acoustics.
—
“I hear you Paul, but look at him now. Maybe we are crazy. Can two people be crazy about the same thing? Fuck. Maybe we have—I don’t know—a gas leak in the house or something.”
Rachel’s left leg bounced incessantly, hooked over her right. She bit at her fingernail, oblivious to the chips she was leaving in her nail polish. And Eddie was laughing with another little girl he’d just met.
The other parents at the playground seemed blissfully aloof or lovingly watchful. Soft hands ready to assist in a tumble. Fast thumbs pecking away at phone screens. I wondered if any of their children were monsters too.
“I don’t think we have a gas leak, Rache. He’s just…clever and manipulative and—I don’t know.”
“He’s not a sociopath… no—he’s not—he’s a kid, right?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think kids can be sociopaths. Or at least they can’t diagnosed as—Hey buddy!—leave your friend’s socks alone, okay?”
Eddie was following the girl up the ladder of the jungle gym and pinching the backs of her socks. He stopped when I called to him, smiled, waved. The girl didn’t seem bothered. Why was I?
“What if we’re overly sensitive? Maybe he’s just a dick and he’s fine?”
“Don’t call him a dick in public, Paul. People will say things.”
“Let ‘em.”
Rachel sighed. “God I could use a cigarette. And there’s a mom over there. I could ask and she’d bum me one.”
I chuckled. “People will say things…”
“Fuck ‘em. I’m going over. Watch Cooper? Thanks for not judging me!”
She was fifteen feet away before I could think to respond. Then she was huddled next to the smoking mom, guarding the end of her cigarette with a hand as the mom lit it. The way mothers spoke upon meeting at the playground always looked like flirting to me. A part of me was more envious of that than Rachel’s nicotine fix. Maybe I could flirt with a dad and get a beer…. I chuckled at the notion, pushed Cooper’s stroller back and forth absently as he slept, felt strangely okay. Then I returned my attention to the jungle gym.
The little girl I saw immediately, in her violently yellow dress. Eddie was wearing something drab. Blue maybe. I couldn’t remember. The girl was meandering near the squat wooden castle that sat between the jungle gym and the swings. She seemed almost grumpy. Perhaps Eddie had left her for a new friend. I searched for him among the taggers and ball kickers. Where was he? Smoking mom had lit another cigarette and was happily chatting with Rachel. The girl was climbing the ladder of the jungle gym again followed by a smiling boy who wasn’t picking at her socks. And Eddie was…where? Fuck. I began to stand and—
“Hi dad!”
Paul at home, Dad on the playground. I recognized his voice. Searched for its source.
“Eddie?”
“Over here!”
I squinted at the castle, at the thin mock arrow slit window on my side of it, at the thin sliver of Eddie’s face, one eye watching me and the curl of a smirk. My heart was racing a bit. Foolish. He was just being a child like the rest.
“Ten more minutes Eddie! Okay?”
“Okay, Paul!”
Back to ‘Paul.’
He darted out of the castle and toward the jungle gym. Made for the high ladder to the slide. The little girl stood at the top. Was she crying?
“Paul! Come over for a second!”
I turned my attention. Rachel beckoned me as smoking mom now held a phone in her hand and Rachel reached for hers. Maybe Rachel had made a friend too. The woman looked hip, like she might be fun.
“On my way!”
I stood, glanced back over at the jungle gym. A crumple of violent yellow and skinny limbs lay at the bottom of the ladder. Eddie stood at the top, alone. He stared at me for a moment, his face emotionless, more jarring than a smirk. He peered downward. And then stepped off the side into open air.
Above the sound of his scream, I almost didn’t hear the crack as he landed on the little girl below.
“Oh my god! Eddie!” Rachel ran. Smoking mom and half dozen other parents followed. Most tried unhelpfully to make sense of it.
“Did anyone see what happened?”
“No, I was watching my son, Theo.”
“Did they fall?”
“Is she okay?”
“The ladder is too high. I’ve said it a dozen times.”
“But what happened? Does anyone know?”
A crowd of parents shrugged bashfully. Guiltily. None of them had seen what I had. They tended to the children, mine and someone else’s. Eddie wailed. The ambulance that came wailed too, a stand in for the silent little girl in the violent yellow dress.
—
She said she would tell. Nameis would’nt like that. And Nameis is a god. He is strong. He is a protector. A leeder.
—
“Tell him what happened, Eddie.”
“Paul, I really think we should let him get to it on his own.”
“Respectfully, Doc, I don’t. Tell him.”
Eddie’s arm was in a bright blue cast. He dislocated his elbow. The girl had nearly died. She had a punctured lung from two broken ribs but her ruptured spleen had been worse. She’d have scars now. And it was Eddie’s fault so it felt like mine.
“I saw you. I’m done protecting you. Now tell him, Edward. Now.”
“I—I fell. I’m sorry for being clumsy dad. You’re right—I’m a f-fairy. I don’t wanna be, I swear.”
There are times when indignation feels like rage, looks like rage. My face burned and I knew how I must’ve looked. But I had never once called my son a fairy. I never called him clumsy. Doctor Foster looked predictably concerned, all the same.
“Are you fucking kidding me Eddie? Doc, he’s—“
“Sorry dad. I forgot—um—I fell. And my dad wasn’t even there. My dad and mommy love me. And—um—they would never—um…”
It was a damn good act. His eyes brimming with tears, his posture tense and guarded, his gaze pleading with me for an answer to a concocted question. It was a fucking masterful act. A tearful, shaking weapon leveled at me.
Doctor Foster’s concern had morphed into something accusatory. I saw him inching toward Eddie. A subtle defensive movement. I hadn’t done anything. Where the fuck had Eddie gotten all of this? The maliciousness, the manipulation—he was a child working a room full of grown men.
I found myself feeling miserably alone, wanting my wife to defend me against my nine year old son. But I hadn’t wanted to gang up on Eddie. I had tried to protect him even as he’d sat in our living room, staring darkly, silently, as I’d screamed about the girl.
“I’d like to speak with your son alone, Paul.”
“This is fucking ridiculous.”
“If it is, then I’d like to hear it from Eddie. He knows the difference between the truth and a lie. Don’t you Eddie?”
“Yes sir.”
“Doctor Foster, I don’t think he does—or—he does, but he doesn’t care. I’m worried that he might be a…sociopath. I know that you can’t—or he’s too young, or—“
He wasn’t listening. He’d already made up his mind about me. I was angry. An abuser. A man deserving of his contempt. And my truth was a poor substitute for Eddie’s lies. Foster clicked his pen pointedly.
“Paul, I really don’t want to involve the authorities unnecessarily.”
“They’ve already been involved, Doc! I did nothing wrong. I’m not abusing my son or whatever it is you think. And I sure as hell didn’t break his arm.”
“Paul, I’m not saying you did. I’d just like to hear Eddie’s story without influence.”
“Oh, this is fucking insane. But sure. Be my guest. Talk. Jesus Fucking Christ.”
I was heaving venom by the time I got into the hall. I couldn’t sit. I wanted to scream, to punch a wall and be the bad man they were probably gossiping about. I checked my phone out of habit. One message from Rachel: how’s it going?. My mind was a non-verbal clot of helpless fury. I didn’t have words for her or anyone else. And…
My anger and my fear and my frustration were all about my son. My little boy.
All of a sudden I couldn’t stand. So I slumped to the ground and stared ahead and wept. There was a display of pamphlets for some program on a side table between a clipboard and a potted plant. On the pamphlets was a father carrying his son on his shoulders. They were smiling. Happy. Everything we probably couldn’t be.
I had held Eddie when he was small and felt nothing but thought-vacating awe. He was potential then—everything and nothing more. Now I was supposed to love him. I did love him. But I hated him too. And I hated me more. I had done something—or hadn’t done something—and now he was broken and I didn’t know how to fix him. And when he looked at me with his impenetrable eyes, I saw potential once more, but I didn’t know for what. And I was terrified of that.
—
Leftenant Nameis had a god that he worshiped whilst staring at the mirror in his tent. His god was just. Fearsome. Resolute. And his god was his alone. For now.
He had offered his god to the first of his two prisoners. It was an act of mercy that had surprised his soldiers, but not half as much as it had surprised Nameis himself. His enemy deserved no enlightenment or beneficence and yet he wondered if there might be more to them than artful meat and blood. Perhaps, he thought, one day they might call him Nameis the Wise. Nameis the Prophet. Nameis the Divine.
Disappointingly, his captive—his enemy—had refused his kindness. He had babbled in his insufferable language and prostrated himself in fear for his life. His life. Selfish. Nameis was no shepherd of egocentric livestock. He was a leader of artists and holy men, cut throats and kings of the field of war. He would not be diminished by a heathen and his rage had flared so cacophonously that he could not even hear the music of the man’s screams.
The second captive was more promising. He spoke Nameis’ tongue. He didn’t cower and quail at the sight of his countryman’s blood. He simply knelt and stared.
“Tell me, boy. Do you like music?” Nameis knew the question was an oblique one. But he had no desire for philosophers and second guessers. And the boy did not disappoint.
“Yes.”
“Good. And what gods have you?”
“I have no gods.”
Nameis searched the black of the boy’s eyes for a lie, but he found nothing. Endless depth. An honest void.
“Well.” He smiled. “Would you like one?”
—
“Come again?”
“I asked if you’d like one, dad. They’re cookies.”
Eddie held out a plate of cookies, awkwardly perched on his cast and steadied by his uninjured hand. There were four of them; store-bought snickerdoodles arranged in a tidy square. Each was topped with a slouching dollop of whipped cream and a few green sprinkles we must’ve gotten for Saint Patrick’s Day. They were almost cute. And a small part of me was frightened to eat them.
He smiled like he did in public. His smile he saved for others. He’d been like this since the last meeting with Doctor Foster; pleasant at home. Polite. Deferential. Odd.
Doctor Foster had expressed plain misgivings about me, but said that in the end, Eddie had been insistent that I hadn’t hurt him. I had plenty of misgivings about Doctor Foster too. He could be an absolute prick without trying, smug in a quietly academic sort of way. But maybe he’d done something good. Or maybe Eddie had done something bad and he was pretending at contrition. What might be worse than nearly killing a stranger?
I eyed the cookies suspiciously and felt crazy for it.
“Sure buddy. Thanks.”
I managed a smile as I took one.
“You’re welcome, dad.”
Cooper was quietly observing a mobile that hung over his play mat on the living room floor, bright eyed and seemingly thoughtful at each rattle or jingle that the dangling clouds and birds and hot air balloons produced. He babbled occasionally, growled like a hatchling dinosaur might, cooed sweetly.
With all of Eddie’s difficulties, I’d lost time with the son of mine who didn’t make me wince. It wasn’t fair. I resented Eddie for that. But now he was being good and my resentment didn’t seem fair to him.
“Mommy, cookie? I tried to make them as pretty as you.” Saccharine.
Rachel took one without my measure of distrust. “Thank you, sweetie. They are pretty.”
Her tone was tired, lilting thinly as she gave him an equally thin smile.
“Is it okay if Nameis has one too, mommy?”
“Whatever you’d like.”
Nameis sat on the sofa in the living room, spotty and vaguely cute. Of all Eddie’s toys, he seemed to like Nameis best. He kept track of him as others got misplaced. One would almost think that he loved him.
Once or twice I had wondered if nine years old was too old for a stuffed animal. I couldn’t remember what I had played with at his age. Action figures maybe. Video games. Eddie made pillow forts on his bed and played with stuffies and spoke in a made up language that he never translated for us. And as I thought about it, I realized that it all seemed normal. Eddie was a child. Maybe my judgment was the problem.
Eddie talked to Nameis in his indecipherable patter. He ate Nameis’ cookie for him, spilled crumbs on the sofa. There was a time when I would have chastised him for that. But now, I was a hostage of a good mood and a remarkably peaceful home, so I said nothing.
Sitting at the dining table in the next room, Rachel wrote feverishly in her latest journal. Doctor Foster gave them out like prescription medication. Pocket-sized blue books with ruled pages and a little red string bookmark attached to the spine. Rachel had filled three since we’d started therapy. Eddie hid his journal and shared it only with Doctor Foster in their one-on-one segments of our group sessions. I hadn’t had the heart to write much of what I felt.
After our cookies we went to bed. Eddie didn’t fight us. He didn’t shout and claw and wake up his brother. He told Rachel and me that he loved us and I watched those foreign words level the armature of Rachel’s dismay. She hadn’t cried all day. And before waking around midnight, I think I had been having a pleasant dream.
I woke in ordinary darkness beside my wife and the familiar rectangle of Cooper’s bassinet that stood on her side of the bed. Her steady breath and Cooper’s said that both were sleeping soundly. The streetlight outside our window cast a dim shape across our bed, fractured by the shadow of a bare-limbed maple tree. I felt warm between our flannel sheets, comfortable beneath the plush weight of our duvet. And yet I shivered all the same.
I had never dealt with proper anxiety. I took no regular medication. I didn’t spiral like Rachel sometimes did. But I wondered if my mind wasn’t succumbing to the frailty I felt in my nerves. Unhelpful.
I closed my eyes again, tried to drift, rolled onto my back, my side, my back again. Sleep wouldn’t come so I went to my Kindle and tried to read myself into fatigue.
An hour passed before the dull backlight and tiny print began to burn my eyes. I was re-reading paragraphs unintentionally. Tired but not sleepy. I lay the ebook on my chest and stared into the dark. I thought about journaling. I’d have to do it downstairs but maybe it would do something about the prickling in my skin. I’d need a hoodie, slippers. The armoire toward the foot of the bed seemed painfully far away. Maybe I could write in the dark. My eyes were adjusting away from the light of my screen. It’s not like my handwriting needed to look—
My mind paused. I squinted. At the space beside the armoire. At a shape that didn’t belong. At—
“Eddie?”
I whispered. Quiet. Not as quiet as Eddie who stood completely still, staring at me from the corner in the dark. Our bedroom door had been closed since I woke. He hadn’t moved an inch. And I shivered once again.
“Eddie—why are you—“
I lifted my Kindle and cast him in its anemic light. He cradled Nameis in the bend of his cast. His other arm dangled at his side and as I learned forward, something glinted in his hand.
“W-what are you holding buddy?”
He took a step towards me. Silently.
“Buddy?”
“I found it on the floor where mommy wasn’t eating her cookie.” He whispered. Took another step.
“What is it, Eddie?”
“A piece of mommy’s wine glass, Paul. The one that broke.”
“Eddie…”
“I wanted to give it to you.” Step. “So that no one gets hurt.”
“Okay Eddie. Good. But you don’t wanna get hurt either, right?” Step. “So just put it—“
He set the shard of glass on the foot of the bed and took another two steps along my side of it. I tried to exhale normally but my breath shuddered out in spite of my effort.
“Did you know you can make music with glass, daddy?”
“What?”
“If you move a wet finger around the top?”
“Eddie, I don’t—“
“Do you like music, daddy?”
“What do you mean?”
Eddie smiled and clutched Nameis to his chest.
“You and mommy sleep so soundly, daddy. You’re all so tired. I wish I could sleep as well as you.” His gaze turned to Rachel and he sighed. “Goodnight, daddy. Sweet dreams.”
He left without another word and I didn’t sleep a wink.
—
He never tired of hearing the music of pain. Lieutenant Nameis had taken to closing his eyes to better appreciate the nuance; the shallow breaths like woodwinds playing pianissimo, the clack of teeth—subtle percussion, the symphonic crescendo of a guttural scream, rising from the lungs like the irrepressible aria of a well-tuned violin.
The boy—his first disciple—was a prodigy.
“Bravo, boy!” Nameis didn’t mind being effusive when it was well-warranted. The boy was humble enough that cautious praise was unnecessary. He knew his place. Nameis knew his potential. But the war would not turn on potential alone.
Nameis’ war was now a holy one, ordained by a god who hungered for aesthetic perfection. And if the boy’s raw talent demonstrated their god’s blessing, then Nameis would make an idol of the boy. A zealot. A crusader.
It was not something his other soldiers truly understood. Those with the stomach for art worked like craftsmen. They were useful, certainly, but they lacked creativity.
The boy made transcendence—synesthesia woven from the medium of suffering. A nocturne in the vagrant hues of coagulation. Impressionist whimsy in the cartilaginous pop of a hyperextended knee. Nameis might have been envious, were he not so proud.
If only he could simply feel that pride without the bore of tactics and strategy. But the enemy vexed him as ever. Devils, all—in the space beyond the pillows and blankets that were his home. His consecrated ground. His holy land.
—
Pilgrim’s Medical Center had treated both Eddie and the girl in the yellow dress. Tansy. They had traveled in separate ambulances. Tansy was unconscious, her lips had been slightly blue, so she went first. Eddie had wailed and moaned. I’m sure it had hurt like hell, but as we traveled with him, all I could think of was the look on his face before he dropped.
Now, Eddie was in a cast he found irksome, but he was fine. His arm would heal. Rachel and I knew that, though we avoided talking about any of that day on the playground as we sat in the hall outside Doctor Foster’s office. Rachel wanted to believe that her son would make her cry but wouldn’t make a child bleed. She’d kept in touch with Tansy’s parents, sent them flowers, lied to herself. And I stayed silent.
Rachel sighed as I stared once more at Doctor Foster’s pamphlet and its portrait of forced familial bliss.
“What do you think they talk about?”
I clicked my tongue. “Us.”
“Did we fail? Like—are we bad parents?”
“No. We raised an angel who makes cookies and screams.”
“Paul. I’m serious.”
“I don’t know. Bad parents? Maybe. I’m sure Headmaster Foster will let us know.”
Rachel giggled.
“Ravenclaw cannot lose anymore points. So if I have to, I’m throwing you under the bus…for my House.”
“And what am I, then? Slytherin?”
“Hufflepuff, clearly.”
“Hufflepuff? You mean bitch.”
“Classic Huff. Badgering people.”
I laughed at ‘Huff’ and missed the pun. She just laughed. And for a moment we were younger. A couple with a baby sleeping in his stroller, happy.
“Huff? If you’re making slick nicknames for Hufflepuff you’re clearly one of them.”
“No. Headmaster Foster gave me a personality test last—hang on. Text.”
She pulled out her phone. I kept up the bit.
“Evasive. Clever. Maybe you are a—wait. What’s wrong?”
Her brow furrowed. Tears crowded her eyes a moment later.
“Rachel—what?”
“There was a complication last night. A—a clot. Tansy, the little girl from the playground, she—“
“…Fuck.”
Rachel wept and I stared ahead and a few minutes later the session concluded. Eddie emerged, holding Nameis in his arms, smiling like an angel with blood upon its wings
-