Page 71 of Hush, Little Baby

What I want to do is go back up, break my own promise, and check if Charlie’s breathing is still even. What I need to do is nothing. I have spent a lifetime teaching myself to need nothing; apparently, I have unlearned it all in a weekend.

My hands clench and unclench. I flex my fingers. The world is not built for these kinds of waits.

Soft footsteps behind me. Marta, again, this time holding a glass of water and a small pill in her hand. She sets them down on the nearest surface without a word and glances up at me, brow arched.

“What is that?” I ask, frowning.

She shrugs, both indifferent and pointed. “Figured you could use a Xanax more than the boy right now. The doctor happened to have it on him.”

The gall. I love her for it.

“I don’t need your fucking pill,” I say, but the heat is gone from my voice.

She shrugs again and leaves them there anyway. “Your mother would be remiss if she heard you speak that way.”

Fucking hell.

13

Charlie

When my consciousness returns, I am pleasantly warm and cushioned by something soft and pillowy beneath me.

I lie there, chest rising and falling, listening to the faint hiss of the air conditioning and the distant echo of footsteps.

It takes me a moment to realize what’s different. I’m rested. Not the mythical, utterly restored kind of rest I’ve only heard about. My muscles are still weak with fatigue, and a deep ache lingers in my bones, but it no longer feels like it’s crushing me from the inside out. The weight is gentler, as if exhaustion were a shawl loosely draped across my shoulders instead of a noose around my neck.

The room is quiet and dim, and I’m alone.

I blink up at the ceiling above me to see painted clouds drift across pale sky-blue plaster—puffy and luminous as if a child’s daydream had been immortalized overhead. For a heartbeat, I forget where I am, heart liberated from its usual siege of worries. Nostalgia wells in my chest, a sweet, aching thing I can’t name.

Would it be so bad if this were mine?

My throat tightens with emotions until I realize something soft is pressed under my chin. My fingers graze plush yellow fur. A stuffed duck—its fleece-like coat impossibly gentle, its tiny black eyes stitched with care—nuzzles against my cheek. One stubby wing is pinned beneath my arm, as if I’ve held him hostage during my nap.

I stare at the duck, my heart twisting. There’s a narrow silk ribbon tied around its neck, white with a faint cotton scent. I trace the ribbon with my fingertip, in awe of it.

The duck should probably rile me, since I’m sure it was my captor who placed him in here with me.

Nikolaus. The strange, big man who wants to be my Daddy.

I tug the duck closer, resting my head against his soft belly. The moment stretches, luxurious and fragile, and like everything I’ve ever wanted.

That’s when I notice the mobile above the crib. It hangs from a slender white arm bolted to the side rail, rotating slowly. Clouds the color of dove’s wings drift between embroidered stars and crescent moons of powdery gray. Each star is stitched with slivers of silver thread that catch the dim light, winking in half-seen rhythms.

I watch it spin. First, a star drifts close, then a moon, then a cloud. Over and over. My heartbeat finds its own pace in that circular journey, softening into something like calm.

I don’t try to climb out of the crib. I’m pretty sure the rail isn’t locked; I could lift myself up, drop to the carpeted floor, and be gone. But I remain where I am, just drifting, drifting, drifting…

My thumb drifts to my lips and slips into my mouth. My mind is spinning in lazy, syrupy circles. My lungs fill and empty in time with the mobile’s slow waltz. I could live inside this moment forever.

My little self reminds me that I can. Nikolaus said so. He said I don’t have to do anything, that all he wants is for me to let him take care of me.

I test the boundaries of the crib without moving from my cozy nest. My eyes wander past the rails, exploring the room in sidelong glances. The walls are dusted with more painted clouds, and a padded, quilted rug the size of a small moon sits just outside the crib. There’s a low bookshelf crammed with toys and board books. The dresser, with knobs shaped like stars, has a small lamp the shape of a crescent moon. Every surface is gently, obsessively rounded—no sharp corners, nothing for a clumsy fall to punish.

A hush holds the air, thick enough that the faintest shuffling outside the room sounds like a foreign country. I float in this bubble, letting the world beyond the nursery dissolve.

It’s so much.