Hunger Moon by Traci Skuce

Author:Traci Skuce
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781988732817
Publisher: NeWest Press
Published: 2019-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

MAX HAD OFFERED TO HELP WITH THE CEILING. He hadn’t been wearing painting clothes, rather a new t-shirt embossed with his microbrewery logo. Didn’t matter, she’d started without him, and had already finished the ceiling. Besides, she knew he didn’t want to help, the whole project sidelined his positive thinking approach. On the other hand, Fern approved, thought it great that Steph wasn’t moving on, but moving over. “Like me,” Fern said. “It wasn’t until I was ready to go on that volunteer vacation that Bailey came whooshing into the world.” Never mind Steph had officially given up trying, her heart crumpled, tossed into the smallest corner of her chest.

“Why this colour Steph?” Max had asked. He’d brought her a cold beer, a sample of his latest IPA, set it on the stepladder, and she let it go warm and flat as she cut-in around the trim.

Last month, he’d erased the video. She’d searched both computers, old email attachments, his phone, hers, but nothing.

“You shouldn’t dwell,” he’d said.

So she started watching YouTube: ultrasounds at fifteen and sixteen weeks. She learned to decipher outlines of hands, feet, bums, noses. Even placentas and umbilical cords. Last week a new clip showed up. Twins, lying one atop the other, as in a bunkbed. The heavy breathing of the father. Then, Tell us you find a heartbeat. Just one. Tell us. The swoosh-woosh of the wand and the man’s panic. Both of them? Both of them? The mother’s blood circulated, but the babies didn’t move. Steph watched the post in the middle of drafting, or over lunch. She thought often of the mother’s belly, exposed and cold with gel.

When Max returned, his eyes bloodshot from the sun or the beer, he asked again, “How come this colour? I mean, it looks like a Vancouver sky, October to June.”

She wiped the brush against the plastic container, her knuckles like small driftwood burls.

“You’re right,” she’d said, layering on more paint.

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