Page 27 of Wildwood

His tone is tense. “We literally just moved here. Uprooted our entire lives. We—” He visibly halts himself, tries to rein in the anger rising in his throat, and takes my hand.

“Look. It’s not that I’m trying to be dismissive. But remember, the simplest answer is the most likely. You are under a tremendous amount of stress. You are pregnant, you lost your job, we just made a big move. Plus . . . it’s . . .” He trails off.

“What?” I demand.

Topher sighs. “You’ve been through a lot, Elinor. You lost both your parents, and now your grandmother is really sick. It’s probably not shocking that being here has dredged up a lot of complicated feelings. Remember after your mom died . . . you really struggled. Understandably.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with that,” I start to say, though I realize how feeble it sounds. Because maybe he’s right. I thought coming here would make me feel closer to my family. But maybe it’s having the opposite effect. Maybe I’m too close to a place that, in retrospect, brought a lot of pain to my family.

I pull my hand away, more forcefully than I mean, and Topher looks injured.

“Do you want me to try and switch my schedule around, so I’m not gone at night so much?”

“No.”

Guilt slams me in the chest, makes me sag even farther into the couch. Topher is under so much stress, working the graveyard shift in the ER. What am I doing, coming at him with these crazy theories? Telling him a witch is haunting our house? And he’s right. We can’t possibly move. We only just arrived. I’m just going through a weird, pregnancy, stress thing.

“You’re right. I’m fine.”

Topher holds my gaze a beat longer, searching it for how I really feel. I smile and squeeze his hand, wanting us to be okay.

“I’m fine,” I repeat.

Topher nods, kisses my head, and stands up, yawning.

“Okay. I’m going to eat something and then head up to sleep, babe.”

“Okay. Love you.”

He’s nearly out of the room when I suddenly remember there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask him. Don’t do it now, I think. But because I’m overtired or just a glutton for punishment, I ask anyway.

“Topher?”

He pauses in the doorway, scratching at his stubble. “Yeah?”

“Sorry, random question.” I smile awkwardly. “Have you and Julian been meeting up for drinks?”

The question hangs for a moment.

“Uh, yeah, like once or twice. Why?” Topher smiles, but it looks strained.

“Oh.” I realize I don’t know how to respond or what point I’m trying to make. “You didn’t tell me that.”

Another strained smile. “Okay, I guess I forgot. You don’t tell me every aspect of your days, do you?”

This feels a little unfair. “I mean, no, but I guess I would have thought you’d mention it if you were meeting up with our neighbor.” Especially when you hardly have time off and your wife is pregnant, I want to add.

“Look, I know you don’t like the guy, so maybe I just didn’t want to deal with it.” And there goes our fragile calm.

“Deal with what?” I stand, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Um. This?” He looks at me, almost incredulously.

“That’s not fair, I’m not making a big deal that you saw him; I was just questioning why you didn’t tell me.” I laugh, a little drop of venom on my tongue. We can escalate so quickly when we are tired.

He holds his hands up in surrender. “Fine. You are right. Fine. Next time I see Julian, I’ll let you know. No big deal.”

“Okay, thank you,” I say and we stand awkwardly looking at each other a moment longer.