Read Online Hush Little Baby by Suzanne Redfearn - Free Book Online Page A

duties—I make sure they’re fed, clean, and well provided for. I take pride in my role as a provider, that I make a good living that pays for a nice life for them, but this is not a sacrifice. I work because I like what I do and because I’d go insane with the banality of motherhood if I didn’t.
    The little girl says, “Again, again.”
    “Mommy’s done,” the mother says.
    The little girl grabs the woman’s hand and pulls her toward the water. The mother reluctantly relents and runs toward the perilous edge for the thousandth time, and for the thousandth time, squeals with pretend panic as they run from the froth.
    Mothers sacrifice for their children, throw themselves in front of trains, lift cars with superhuman strength to save them.
    I do nothing. Drew has glimpsed Gordon’s temper. He was there when Gordon nearly killed me. He’s been subjected to Gordon’s demand for perfection, has suffered the consequences of not living up to his impossible standards.
    He knows his dad has hurt me. He’s heard the slaps and the thumps at night, has been woken by my involuntary gasps and yelps, has heard the sharp intake of my breath when he hugs me too hard the next day.
    Yet I stay.
    My mind drifts to the first time Drew and I were alone. It was the day after he was born, and he was cradled in the rook’s nest of my arm, his tiny lips opened and closed, glubbing around his toothless gums, and his newborn eyes, barely slits, opened around their pale blue centers to find mine.
    “Hello, little man,” I said.
    At my voice, his mouth rooted for my breast. He knew me.
    Although he’d just fed, I opened my gown, and he latched on again, a lackluster effort more for comfort than nutrient. That moment lives in my heart, the moment he was all mine, when life was still perfect and I could give him everything he needed.
    Now, when he needs me most, I’m failing.
    My cell phone buzzes. It’s probably Tina wondering where I am. I ignore it.
    I need to protect them. I just don’t know how. I can’t keep Gordon from hurting them any more than I can keep him from hurting me.
    I need to leave, but I stay.
    Scared, yes. Lazy, maybe. Weak, definitely. Exhausted, always.
    When the mother and daughter pack up, so do I. Attending to the calamity of my life will have to wait, because today, like yesterday, and a thousand yesterdays before that, there’s too much to be done.
    As I walk to my car, I play the message that was left on my phone. It’s Gordon. Addie’s having some friends over so I need to pick up Drew from after-school club on my way home from work.

17
    M y detour to the beach created a backlog of work, and the afternoon whirls by in a hailstorm of catch-up. Four hours later, when I leave the office, the sun’s already begun its descent and I’m still texting, phoning, and dictating as I walk to my car.
    My daily odyssey is so familiar I barely notice it as I drive on the endless freeway that leads hordes of cars like ants toward their destinies, the landscape around me a redundant scene of industrial buildings, apartments, box stores, minimarts, and car dealerships.
    When the last fire of the day is stomped out, I speed-dial my dad.
    We rehash Drew’s baseball game, then I tell him about work. He grunts his approval at Sherman finally acquiescing to the merger and his disapproval at the man’s decision to hurt his sons as his final act.
    His laugh, one of the few things not compromised by the stroke, fills my heart as I recite the joke on the birthday card Connor gave me.
    My blinker signals my exit, and I merge onto Laguna Canyon Road to travel through the preserved strip of wilderness that leads to the Pacific. Twisting native oaks, sycamores, and coastal sage paint the canyon green and gold, and splashes of wild mustard and artichoke thistle add spots of yellow and purple. This is my favorite part of the journey.
    “I might have found it,” my dad says. The consonants aren’t there, but I fill them in. In