Things We Burn Read Online Anne Malcom

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Sports, Virgin Tags Authors: Anne Malcom Advertisement1

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He nodded at the bassinet.

His grip tightened. “And I know that you’re processin’ this shit with your father and it’ll probably bleed into doubts about me, so let me tell you… I’m not leaving. I’m never leaving. I’ll have it inked into my forehead if you need me to.”

I smiled. “That won’t be necessary.”

“The offer stands.” He kissed my head. “You believe that, though, don’t you?”

I nodded my head, even though I didn’t. Not entirely.

I was unraveling.

Slowly.

Or rapidly, depending on how you counted time.

Before then, before Mabel, I could make decisions without hesitation. Menus, staffing, ingredients. Now, the simple thought of how many layers she should wear to bed consumed me. I went back-and-forth, debating with myself. I questioned putting her in her car seat—was she angled correctly, was she buckled too tight? Not tight enough?

Every decision was agonizing, as though it determined whether the world would end or not.

I know everyone noticed me struggling. It was impossible to miss. And that was eating me up inside too. Looking weak. Even if logically I knew this was chemical, hormonal.

My mom and Maisie were leaving the next day. I could barely eat due to the dread I felt about that. My mother was in the kitchen, making the last of the freezer meals that were neatly labeled and dated.

Maisie was in the living room with Mabel, and Kane was getting groceries. I’d taken a shower, forcing myself to make it long, knowing my sister had it covered.

My hair was wet because I couldn’t bring myself to take the time to dry it. I wore my new uniform of pants with an elastic waist and a linen, button-down shirt, easily opening to feed Mabel.

I made my way through the graveyard of baby products that promised to calm even the most distressed child. Swings mothers on the forums swore by, bouncers that countless women recommended, playmats that were meant to entertain and help with neck strength. Hundreds if not thousands of dollars’ worth of products marketed to desperate parents who would pay anything to calm their baby.

Mabel didn’t like any of them. She liked to be in her father’s arms the most. Then whomever else was around. Currently, it was Maisie, standing, swaying back-and-forth, watching some show on the television.

I watched her for a moment, her skirt moving fluidly with her movements.

There was still a rift between my sister and me. A clean break between us, the slice practically surgically sliced since the day our father died. We dealt with it in entirely different ways. She and my mother had seemed so vulnerable, so delicate that I took it upon myself to be a fortress, to keep the family together by shoving my grief away somewhere where the pain became a distant part of me that I gritted my teeth to ignore as I watched my mother and sister weep at my father’s funeral. I’d let tears escape my eyes in short bursts, quickly wiping them away in order to nod and smile at the many people who had come to pay their respects to my father.

He’d been a popular man. So popular that they ran out of room at the church where the service was being held and had to set up screens for the people lined up outside.

I hated them all. His friends, milling around our house afterward, drinking, eating, talking. But I’d also been glad to have them filling up the rooms so I didn’t have to feel how empty they were. It gave me a distraction.

The people left, eventually, but my coldness stayed. It grew. I stayed away from Maise and Mom and left as soon as I could. Yet they were there for me when I needed them.

I cradled a coffee my mother had handed me before she went to do yet another load of laundry.

“How did you do it?” I asked Maisie over the mug. “I’m trying, but I … can’t. I’m falling apart.”

It was the first time I’d verbalized that.

“You created a person inside of you,” Maisie replied, not looking at me like I was weak, broken. “You cultivated fingers and toes, a liver and a brain, reproductive organs. All the grandchildren you’ll have were in your womb. You made an entire person and all the organs to sustain her life. Your own organs rearranged themselves in order to accommodate that person. And when it was time for her to leave, your pelvis stretched, your body opened to its limit, and not only did she come out, but the life you produced was wrenched from inside you. You experienced the biggest hormone drop any human will have … ever. Your insides are forever different. You don’t get out of motherhood unchanged or unscathed, sweetie.”

She kissed Mabel’s head.

I ground my teeth, her kind words scratching against my irritated skin. She freely gave tenderness, kindness to me. Kindness I felt I didn’t deserve.


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