Orphans of Bliss by Josh Malerman

Author:Josh Malerman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wicked Run Press
Published: 2022-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

***

In the morning, Alice thinks Eric will leave without saying anything, but on his way out the door, he takes her arm.

“I assume you’re dropping Leo at my mother’s and coming home to work on the new book, but maybe you could hit the ten o’clock meeting on Broad Street?”

Alice flashes a smile so contrived, she feels like a jack o’ lantern. “That’s a great idea,” she says, and kisses him on the cheek.

After Eric’s car disappears down the street, she continues to stare after him. She should have said something more meaningful, should have prolonged their goodbye. She spins from the window, blinking back tears, then heads to the living room.

It’s time to collect her son.

She tries not to inhale Leo’s scent as she lifts him out of the playpen, but drowns in it all the same. Every second with him is now both the worst kind of torture and a euphoria a thousand times more intense than any dope she’s ever shot. She packs his bag and changes his diaper, struggling to keep his attempts to boop her nose from penetrating her heart. That anything as pure and good as what she’s had with her son could be a virtual reality illusion is a cruelty she cannot tolerate. She has to wall off her love.

“I’m running very late,” she says ten minutes later, when Eric’s mother, Sharon, opens her door. She thrusts the diaper bag at her and prepares to set Leo down beside his grandmother. Before she can do so, her body goes cold as ice. There is mercury—no, steel—in her blood. She pauses, but no wave of heat comes to displace the iciness. Alice squeezes her son, and he giggles, then squirms.

“I love you,” she whispers so fiercely it sounds like a threat. Tears sting her eyes. “I’ve always loved you, and I always will. You’re all I ever wanted.”

She hands Leo to her mother-in-law, who’s looking at her strangely. Before Sharon can ask if everything is okay, Alice runs to her car.

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