Her head seemed okay—mostly. She’d been allowed home with strict instructions to be vigilant, one more thing to remain on high alert about. Word had indeed traveled fast—Benny found out about the incident before she could tell him herself. He was too kind, too concerned, to say what she imagined him to be thinking: that every throb of her temple, every brush against her bruise was like a harsh reminder to keep her head out of other people’s problems.
Still, she’d do it again. She could still see that boy unsteady on the ledge, still feel her heart-plummeting fear that he was going to fall. She was glad she’d been wrong. If she hadn’t, she’d have been too busy reeling from her own blind spot to catch him.
You seem to have pretty good instincts.
So many people went through their lives in a blissful denial that anything truly bad could ever happen to them, or to anyone they knew. Clara wasn’t one of those people. And she wasn’t jealous of them, either. She felt sorry for them, because she knew how wrong they were.
Clara possessed a vicious animal instinct indeed when it came to protecting her children. So vicious that it coursed almost calmly through her veins even when there was no imminent danger. She had no idea if she felt it more strongly than other mothers, or if it was the same for everyone. The onset of the sensation had been so primal, the unsummoned immediacy of it. She’d been lying in the darkness after one of Thomas’s feedings, in those early days when he seemed to eat more than he slept. She was sleepily marveling at how beautiful he was curled beside her bed in his bassinette, his little tufts of hair matted down on the top of his head, his tiny curled fingers peeking out of his swaddle, his angelic pout and rounded cheeks. And the thought had struck her so clearly she might have spoken it aloud: If anyone ever tries to harm you, I will kill them. The ferocity of it delighted her.
It was too bad women weren’t born with that fire. If biology could program us to guard our offspring, why not also ready us to fearlessly protect ourselves? Where was the sixth sense that would have been so helpful when it came to certain dangers especially—the kind that talked smoothly and smiled handsomely and draped themselves in sexy suede blazers and unassuming button-downs?
Or that coached you through a pregnancy when you were steeped in loss, alone and overwhelmed at facing motherhood times two?
Or helped you with neighborly things when you were in over your head in a new house and a new town, and desperately in love with someone who would never be yours?
It had been so nice, in adjusting to a life of all-day mothering, to strike up a friendship with someone younger and single and bringing news of what Clara sometimes thought of as “the outside world.” Izzy had a no-fuss, semiserious way about her that was just on the na?ve side of sweet, with an air of inexperience but not without an edge, and Clara liked the edge best.
She’d been trying to push Hallie’s insinuations about Izzy and Paul out of her mind, but with Detective Marks’s casual warning they had flooded back. It nagged at her now, the idea that maybe she should have said something to Izzy. The idea that maybe she still should.
She padded back to her own room. She felt around in the blue light of the TV for the remote control buried in the comforter before switching it off and climbing in. She had to get to sleep; Benny was to wake her in three hours—a concussion precaution—if Maddie didn’t beat him to it. She was settling herself on her pillow when she realized his eyes were open, staring at her through the short span of darkness between them. She smiled sleepily, but his expression was unreadably serious, and she suddenly found herself holding very still.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said.
“Good on you,” she murmured, but he didn’t crack a smile. She really was incredibly tired. She just wanted him to wrap his arms around her and spoon her to sleep.
He took a breath. “Maybe you should think about going back to work.”
She closed her eyes, then opened them.
“I’m concerned all this drama next door is dredging up bad memories. I’m not sure it’s good for you right now, being alone here with the kids all day.”
“How could you say that?” Conflicted as she sometimes felt, she was surprised at the conviction in her voice. But not at the hurt. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”
“Is that still true, though? Like it or not, this is the state of our neighborhood: investigations, suspicions, for who knows how long. I’m worried you’ve been obsessing over it—and I’m not saying I blame you. It’s upsetting, and it’s right here, and so are you. But at the mere sight of the detective today, you concussed yourself. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep your brain busy with … something else.”
She sucked in a breath. “That is not how it happened, and you know it.”
“On a subconscious level, you don’t think it might be?”
Benny didn’t sound like himself. He’d awoken possessed by one of those other husbands, the ones who said infuriating things and did not know when to stay in their own lane.
“No, I don’t. Because one, I didn’t even know it was her until after I hit my head, and two, on a subconscious level, my brain is busy with plenty else. I can’t believe you’d have the gall to imply that I don’t have enough to do.”
She cued up her day in replay. Even before her run-in at the playground, it had been another exercise in not getting through half the things on her list. Maddie’s diaper blowout had cut a half hour off their time at the park before they’d even arrived. It had also bumped the towels from the laundry queue, a fact that proved inconvenient during dinner when Thomas upended his milk and she had to soak it up with an old sweatshirt. Never mind that any other person with a bag of frozen peas affixed to her forehead would have been sprawled on the couch to rest.
Benny sighed. “That’s not what I said. You’re twisting what I said.”
“I’m not. First Pam yanks Thomas out of preschool, and now you’re questioning my decision to be a stay-at-home mom, and you think I’m the one putting too much stock in ‘the drama next door’?” The more she talked, the angrier she got.
“I only want you to be happy,” he said more quietly. “I’m just concerned that you’ve been being pulled in … a dark direction. I’m sorry. If you’re happy enough, that’s good enough for me.”
Was she happy enough? Was anyone fully happy immersed in cleaning up one mess after another while chasing people who seemed all at once utterly fragile and impossibly stubborn, without a second of head space to hear herself think? Was anyone fully happy going off to even the best of careers every day, when clients could get irrational and bosses could get unreasonable and work could pile higher at the worst possible times?
Happiness, to Clara, was an elusive thing that came in the form of the overall feeling that tucked you in at the end of the day, even when you had a headache. If you were lucky, it was soft and warm, made up of tiny memories of Maddie’s first high-speed jog across the living room and Thomas’s reliable glee at her same old knock-knock jokes and the scent of freshly cut grass on the breeze.
Benny gave her a peck on the nose and pulled the covers high, turning his back to her with a pleasant enough “Good night.”
She hated going to bed mad. One of the more infuriating things about Benny was that he had no problem doing it, and the next day he’d act like everything was fine. Which, to him, it often was.
She could handle herself. Did he not trust that she could? To Clara, trust was so tangled up with love that it made her chest hurt when she thought about it. Maybe she didn’t have much sense of herself these days. Her every choice was ruled by the children. But that in itself was one of the few choices she had made. What right did Benny have to call it into question?
Even on days when she’d grappled with her stay-at-home role, she hadn’t fantasized about going back to work in anything but the most tangential terms: To eat lunch uninterrupted at a desk. To get through a cup of coffee without it growing cold.
If it took Benny questioning her place to make her feel more solid in it, then she wouldn’t begrudge the question. She’d be glad of it even as she answered him with an emphatic no.
But she couldn’t help but wonder what it meant, really, that he had asked.