It is in the dark that she loves him the most.

They’re both worn out by the time night falls and an inevitable softness has replaced the fractious fights they’ve left like teeth marks on each other’s skin. She sees it as a gift, the dark, the way it curls a ribbon around his wrist and allows her to reel him close and tuck him into her lap without protest. It’s instinctual, a child’s craving for comfort when the lights go out, the way they whimper at the prospect of sleep, the loneliness of it. She’s heard it said that sleep is similar to death, that fading of consciousness and loss of control. When she props elbows on the edge of his mattress, chin on her fist, and watches his furrowed brow smooth as he falls still, all she can think is how peaceful and quiet and lovely he is.

And how easily he could be dead.

Sometimes she can’t bear looking at him like that and she has to slide careful fingertips across his chest until she feels the imperceptible rise and fall of delicate ribs. She will match her breathing to his until she convinces herself that she is his lungs, she is his heartbeat.

Elodie January is keeping alive this thing that she has made.

Her child, her world, her Jude.

They had a difficult day, though it blurs so seamlessly with yesterday’s harried wars that there’s a rhythmic predictability to it now. She could set a clock by the predinner hungry meltdown, the refusal to eat what she cooked, the argument about not getting into the bath followed by not getting out. He’s wound down enough that he’s agreed to pajamas—the fire truck ones that are far too small, elastic cuffs above his ankles, the collar ratty and chewed—and he’s now sequestered in the comfortable safety of the nursery. His curls are still wet, his feet bare. She lost both the fight to use the hair dryer and the next one to put on socks.