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She ate her son at the kitchen table.
She sat beneath the yellow light and touched his face. Cold. Not dead-cold, not yet. His soft skin gave slightly beneath her thumb.
“You’re still warm,” she whispered, her voice warm too.
The boy did not answer.
She lowered her head. Her mouth found his hand first. The little fingers rested against her tongue. She bit down.
Warmth flooded her tongue. Not the heat of blood, no, but the heat of summer.
Of a field beneath a white sky. Of grass brushing against her knees. Of a child’s laughter somewhere ahead of her. The heat of his hand inside hers, impossibly delicate and damp and alive.
She swallowed. Something small seemed to slip down her throat, fingers brushing the soft walls of it as they went. She felt each one separately. Thumb. Forefinger. The little crooked finger he had broken when he was four. Then, suddenly, she was beneath a bed. Sunlight spilled across the floor in long golden bars, and his laughter came from somewhere above her.
The kitchen returned, and her son was still beneath her hands. His eyes were closed.
She ate again. The taste had changed. Something sweet lingered beneath her tongue, like warm milk and sugar.
She closed her eyes and saw a bedroom, sunlight through thin curtains.
Her son sat between her knees, his head bowed obediently while she drew the brush through his hair. Slowly, carefully. The bristles caught on a knot. He winced.
“Sorry,” she murmured as she worked it loose with her fingers. His hair was soft beneath them, still damp from the bath.
She remembered how he used to complain about having it brushed. She remembered him squirming. She remembered telling him to hold still. She remembered—
The brush caught. She pulled gently. A strand came loose. She held it between her fingers. It was dark, curly, and there was blood at the root.
She blinked. The yellow light of the kitchen hummed overhead. Her son lay beneath her hands. His hair was still. She looked at the strand between her fingers. There was no blood.
She turned it over. It curled around her finger. Something pulled beneath her ribs. A dull, spreading ache, as though a small hand had closed around something inside her. She tried to pull it free. Her scalp tingled. She felt the brush moving through her hair. Slowly, carefully. From behind her.
She did not turn. The bristles caught.
She closed her eyes, lowered her head, and ate again.
She ate until the room began to smell like salt.
At first, she thought it was the rain. She could hear it against the windows, soft and constant.
But the windows were closed. The smell grew stronger. She looked beneath the table.
A thin line of water had gathered along the baseboards.
She stared at it. Then she looked back at her son. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
The water reached her feet. It was cold, black. She did not move.
It spread slowly across the floorboards, slipping beneath the chairs, darkening the wood. Tiny grains of sand collected around the legs of the table.
She touched one, and it stuck to her fingertip.
The water reached her ankles.
She looked toward the windows. Beyond the glass, there was no street.
Only water. Gray beneath a white sky. She could not see where the horizon ended.
Something passed outside the window, slow, large. Drifting.
She turned back. Her son was smiling.
“Momma.”
She froze. His lips had not moved. The whisper came from beneath the table.
She looked down. Nothing. Only her son’s cold, blank face. Only water.
It was higher now. Her calves disappeared beneath it. She placed both hands on the table.
“You’re still warm,” she whispered.
The water reached her knees.
Her mouth found his forearm. She bit down. The flesh resisted.
For one awful moment, there was no memory at all.
The flavor was heavy with salt, as if the entire ocean were being pressed into the small space of her mouth. There was no warmth, only the cold resistance of him beneath her teeth.
She stopped. She looked at him.
His skin was gray beneath the yellow light.
Her son was dead.
She swallowed anyway.
By the time the water reached her waist, she could no longer feel the floor. Chairs floated around her. A spoon drifted past. Then a photograph. She caught it.
Her son stood on a beach, squinting into the sun.
She remembered taking the picture. She remembered the wind. The gulls. The salt on his skin. She remembered his hand slipping from hers.
The photograph dissolved beneath her fingers.
She stared at the water. She stared at her son.
His eyes were closed. Water moved around his shoulders. She reached across the table and touched his cheek.
His skin was cold. She pulled her hand away.
She touched him again. His skin was warm. She smiled.
The water rose to her chest. The yellow light flickered overhead. The ceiling seemed very far away. She could hear waves beneath the floorboards. She could hear them in the walls. She could hear them inside herself.
Her son was disappearing beneath the water, his features blurring and softening as the light refracted through the gray depths.
She leaned closer. Her hair drifted around her face, a dark, weightless web swaying in the current.
The water reached her mouth. She breathed through her nose. Her son opened his eyes.
For a moment, he looked exactly as he had that day. Sunlight in his hair. Sand on his knees. A blob of sunscreen on his nose.
His little hand reached for hers. She reached back. Their fingers touched.
The water covered the table. Covered the chairs. Covered the yellow light. Covered her.
For a moment, there was only the familiar shape of him beneath her hands. Cold. Weightless in the current. He seemed to soften beneath her touch, becoming less a body than a memory.
Then even that began to dissolve.
Still, she did not let go. She bent beneath the surface. Her mouth found him in the dark.
And she ate again.