Free House of Glass by Sophie Littlefield

her voice even, to keep the tears from forming. She couldn’t cry now, she wouldn’t cry, and it was ridiculous to have this conversation now, but she needed to know. Suddenly the idea of never knowing—if things went wrong, if she ended up dead, shot by one of the strangers upstairs—was intolerable. “You said you took the car in yesterday, but the dent was still there. And you’ve been seeing Sarah. Don’t tell me you haven’t, Ted. I’m not stupid. And all those afternoons you disappear—you really want me to believe you’ve been sitting in Starbucks checking your LinkedIn account? When you haven’t had an interview in over a month?”
    “Jen...look. Whatever you think I’ve been doing, I haven’t been having an affair. I swear to you.” He put a hand on the back of the couch for support. “Sarah’s just—there’s nothing there, honest.”
    “Then what have you been doing all this time?” Jen gave up her battle not to cry, angrily pushing the tears away with the back of her hand. “What am I supposed to think?”
    Ted reached for her, and she pushed his hands away. “Don’t,” she snapped, and Teddy stirred, murmuring in his sleep. That couldn’t happen; she couldn’t let the kids hear them fighting. “Tell me,” she whispered angrily.
    “I’ve...” Ted’s shoulders drooped, and he suddenly looked exhausted. There were deep smudges under his eyes, the skin loose and pouchy, the skin of an old man.
    The huddled form on the couch shifted, and Teddy emerged from the nest of quilts, rubbing his eyes. “Mommy?” he said sleepily. He looked around him, blinking, and his face crumpled. The basement, shadowed and rearranged, looked nothing like it did before, and Teddy must have thought he’d woken up in a strange place.
    “Oh, sweetie,” Jen said, picking him up off the couch. “Hush, it’s all right.”
    “I want Daddy,” Teddy snuffled, reaching out for Ted, and Jen handed him over, gently untangling the quilt that had been twisted around him. Ted cradled his son in his arms, hitching him up so Teddy’s cheek rested on his shoulder.
    “Hey, little buddy,” Ted whispered. “It’s okay.”
    “I lost my truck,” Teddy said, pointing somewhere off into the dark. Jen looked where he was pointing, but didn’t see anything other than a stack of boxes. “Livvy dropped it over there.”
    “Well, we can look for it in the morning,” Ted said. “Listen, how about you and me sleep down here on the floor. Like camping, what do you say?”
    “Camping?” Teddy asked, yawning.
    “Yup. Just us guys, the ladies have to sleep on couches because they’re not tough enough.”
    “Can we go to Moose Lake?”
    Ted pushed the coffee table away from the couch with his foot, making a space wide enough to stretch out. He set Teddy down and lay next to him, curving his body around his son. “Sure, we can go back to Moose Lake next summer. This is just practice, okay? We’ll practice down here so that when we’re in the tent, we’ll be really good at it. But you have to go back to sleep, and show me you’re ready for camping, okay?”
    It broke Jen’s heart to see how tender Ted was with their son, how gently he caressed the downy blond hair that never lay flat. Ted looked up and met her eyes, and he mouthed, “I’m sorry,” but Teddy’s eyelashes were already fluttering down. Their little boy would be asleep again in moments.
    Jen draped the quilt over them, tucking it around. She made a pillow of one of the folded quilts and slipped it under Ted’s head. Ted reached up and grabbed her wrist, not hard, but holding her there.
    “Jen. You believe me, don’t you? I would never... I don’t want any other woman. It’s you. It’s only you.”
    Jen wanted to lie down in his arms, press her face to his chest and hear his heartbeat. Maybe then she could believe. Maybe she could detect in its rhythm the truth about his love for her.
    But that wasn’t possible, not now. Teddy needed him, and