The smell of semen on her hands. Her swollen vulva.
The operator tells her what to do, she puts the phone on speaker as she goes through the motions. She finds air to fill her own lungs, and then blows that air into his. The adrenaline helps her focus, to do exactly what she must do, but she knows this gift of senseless time is fleeting. It is a race, and it will end. She is listening intently to the woman on the other end of the phone, she wants to do everything exactly as she says. She tells her she’s done well, that all she can do now is wait, that the paramedics are minutes away, they’ll come straight to the backyard to find them.
She sees, then, the paper airplane near Xavier’s side that must have been in his hand when he fell. She remembers seeing it earlier that night. In his room.
His room.
She takes the stairs two at a time, she feels wild, knocking into the walls. In his bedroom, she slips in the coffee and scrambles to reach the black marker on the floor. She scribbles as hard as she can over every word he wrote. He had meant it. She is frantic and she is whimpering, and her fingers are burning, and she wants to go back to hold him on the grass. The parcel of time she has been given to be weightless and fearless is over. She’s almost done. She will keep answering the operator’s questions, she’ll tell Xavier she loves him over and over and over, she won’t leave him ever again, but first she needs these words covered up.
The yip of sirens. She drops the marker. And she runs to him.
Epilogue
Two Weeks Later
Why are you here?”
His words stop her in the doorway of Xavier’s hospital room. Jacob’s tone feels accusatory, but she reminds herself this is just the paranoia. The suffering of a lie.
“I woke up early so thought I’d relieve you. Why don’t you go home, see the twins for a bit?” She looks down to Xavier, his torso raised in the bed, playing a game on the iPad. He hasn’t spoken yet. This can happen, Whitney and Jacob are reassured, getting back to baseline can take some time, even in the best-case scenario, like his, when the tests check out fine. They all move around him pretending this new normal is bearable, half watching movies on the bulky television mounted to the wall, talking around him, about him, about all the things they’ll do together again as a family when he’s soon discharged. It’s for the good of Xavier’s spirits, of course, but Whitney wants it too—this comfort. This guarantee.
Jacob puts his few things back in his overnight duffel bag, folds the sheet, and then uses the phone in the room to order Xavier’s breakfast from the meal service. He slings the bag on his shoulder.
“You sure?” he asks.
Whitney has avoided being alone at the hospital with Xavier since he woke up. Jacob stays with him every night, sleeps on the bench in Xavier’s room, while she lies awake in their bed at home, Thea and Sebastian on either side of her. He only leaves for a break when Louisa and the twins come.
Nobody talks anymore about what happened that night—they’ve all let it go. The repetitive questions, the quiet conversations she could hear just outside the door.
And she should let it go too.
But she can’t live like she does, numb with the fear of what might surface once he begins to talk.
She needs to be alone with him.
Jacob looks hesitant to leave. She stands with her hands on her waist, she stares at him as he stares at their son. The paranoia again.
“Is there a problem?” She swallows.
He touches Xavier’s foot under the blanket. And then he comes to her slowly, puts a tender hand between her shoulder blades, his lips lightly to her cheek. “Not at all,” he says. She hopes he can’t feel her beating heart. “Call me if you need me. Love you.”
She steps into the hall and watches him get on the elevator. And then she goes back to Xavier’s room, flips the sign on the door to privacy.
He’s put the iPad down and now he’s staring straight ahead at the whiteboard on the wall, where they’re meant to keep track of things, to note the time of any cognitive changes so the nurse can record them in his chart. Tremors. Stutters. Confusion.
She sits on the side of his bed and finds his hand. She shakes it a little, playfully, trying to jostle a smile from him. She does it again, puts her forehead to his. I’m different now, she wants to say to him, I am really here. I am really listening. I see you.
“You can tell me anything, you know.”
She wonders if this is what it’s meant to feel like, if this is what she’s been missing all along. Is this the yearning she never knew, this desperation to be loved in the way only her son can love her? This urge to swallow him into her soul, to exist only and exactly in the way he needs her to? I’m yours, she wants to say. I can forget who I was before, can you?
She pulls away and strokes his cheeks, so swollen from the steroids that he’d barely be recognizable to anyone else. They call it moon face. The moon, the moonlight. Her nakedness, illuminated.
“Anything,” she says quietly. “We’ll keep it between us. Even if it’s about that night. About what happened.” She hopes he can’t hear the tremor in her voice. She hopes she feels safe to him, for once. Will she ever feel safe to him again? She doesn’t want to push him too far. But then, quietly, “Even if it’s something you aren’t sure is true . . . something that your brain might be mixing up. It can just be our secret. Do you understand? I don’t even have to tell them you’ve spoken. Not until you’re ready.”
She strokes him again. He doesn’t take his eyes off the whiteboard.
And then he nods.
“Can you tell me?” She looks to the closed door, and then to his hand squeezed in hers. She can feel his eyes tracing her face now. He has something to say. He’s been waiting for them to be alone. She feels it.
“Tell me.” She wants to reach inside him and pull it out, to have his words right there in her hands. To mold whatever he says into what she needs it to be. “Please.”
He strokes her knuckles with his thumb. The gesture is so tender, so reciprocal, and the relief brings tears to her eyes.
“Okay,” he says. She gasps softly at the sound of his voice. She was right, he’d needed to be alone with her, only her. They stare at each other, and then he inhales, looks down at their hands instead. She holds her breath. He bites his dry lips. The tears trickle along the ridge of his swollen cheeks. He wipes his nose on the back of his other hand.
“What will happen?” he asks, and runs his thumb over her knuckles again, just once.
She cups his big face and aches with how much she loves him. With how much she wants to make everything better. She shakes her head, she doesn’t know what he means.
“To you,” he says. “When I tell them everything.”
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the marvelous Madeleine Milburn and the team at Madeleine Milburn Agency, who are second to none. I’m grateful to benefit from the support of Esmé Carter, Hannah Ladds, Liv Maidment, Giles Milburn, Valentina Paulmichl, Georgina Simmonds, Liane-Louise Smith, and Rachel Yeoh.
Thank you to Pamela Dorman, Maxine Hitchcock, and Nicole Winstanley, who were so patient, thoughtful, and encouraging as I wrote this novel. It’s a joy and privilege to work with you, and I’m incredibly grateful for your commitment to my writing.
To the phenomenal publishing teams who have brought The Push and now The Whispers into the world with such care and enthusiasm, thank you for all that you do. In particular, to Brian Tart and the Pamela Dorman Books and Viking team: Diandra Alvarado, LeBria Casher, Tricia Conley, Andy Dudley, Tess Espinoza, Matt Giarratano, Rebecca Marsh, Randee Marullo, Nick Michal, Marie Michels, Lauren Monaco, Patrick Nolan, Jeramie Orton, Lindsay Prevette, Jason Ramirez, Andrea Schulz, Kate Stark, Mary Stone, and Claire Vaccaro. To Louise Moore and the Michael Joseph team: Clare Bowen, Jen Breslin, Riana Dixon, Helen Eka, Christina Ellicott, Laura Garrod, Sophie Marston, Kelly Mason, Sriya Varadharajan, Lauren Wakefield, and Madeleine Woodfield. And to Kristin Cochrane and the team at Penguin Canada: Beth Cockeram, Dan French, Charidy Johnston, Beth Lockley, Bonnie Maitland, Alanna McMullen, and Meredith Pal.
Thank you to Dr. Lennox Huang of SickKids, Dr. Kim Aikins of Starship Children’s Hospital, and Dr. Sony Sierra of TRIO Fertility, who generously gave their time and expertise to inform parts of this novel related to medical care and fertility. (I must note I’ve taken small liberties for the purpose of story and character, therefore not everything is a reflection of their knowledge—forgive me!)