Epilogue

EPILOGUE

I don’t leave the house now without flowers in my hair. Today, the first day of October, of a year I don’t know, I wear a crown of yellow freesia. I amble through the farmers market, eating an apple. It’s crisp and pink and delicious. There’s another one in my pocket for later. When I’m done, I’ll save the seeds. They have many uses.

“Hello, Annie,” I hear as I pass by the tents. “Good morning!”

I smile and nod. If I like the person who says it, I’ll say “Good morning” back. If I don’t, I’ll say nothing at all.

“Miss Crane?” A woman dressed in overalls waves at me. She calls me by a name I haven’t heard in a long time. “Miss Crane?”

I almost say, No, I’m not Miss Crane. You’re mistaken. Instead, I say, “Yes.”

“It’s Madison Thorpe,” the woman says. “I was in your class. You wrote me a recommendation letter for college. You let me eat lunch with you sometimes. You were one of my favorite teachers.”

I remember her now. The palest blue eyes. She still wears excessive black eyeliner. It settles into her crow’s-feet. I wonder how old she is.

“God,” she says. “You haven’t aged a day.”

“Oh, thank you,” I tell her. I’m now interested in this conversation. “It’s good to see you. How have you been?”

“Eh,” she says, shrugging. “Got my bachelor’s at Sarah Lawrence, as planned. Then I moved to California. I was out there for a long time. I wanted to get my PhD, but I’m massively in debt and my partner and I recently separated, so . . . I’m back in Aster living with my parents. Which is great, because they’re horrified that I’m forty-two and unmarried.”

She rolls her eyes, and I remember. She used to have pins on her backpack. She stood up for me once. When they were chirping at me.

“Sorry. I’m vomiting all my problems. Oversharing. Anyway. It’s funny. Back then I was convinced we’d be friends if I were a little older. I thought I was so deep, so wise. That I understood life and all its intricacies. I look back and laugh. I must have been insufferable.”

“You weren’t,” I say.

“You were a really great teacher.”

I wasn’t a great teacher. I was okay at best. But I appreciate the compliment.

I look at her. Her overalls are dirty, paint spattered. Her hair is dark and parted straight down the middle. She’s flushed. There’s something doll-like about her. An innocence.

She’s in pain, of course. She burns with it. It’s in the air around her, billowing up past the treetops, up toward the bright morning sun.

“Would you like an apple?” I take it out of my pocket and offer it to her.

She accepts.

“Thanks,” she says, and takes a bite. “Would you want to get coffee sometime? I kind of hate everyone else who lives here. I mean, in Aster. Rowan is pretty nice.”

“Yes,” I say, “I would like that.”

She smiles at me, her cheeks fat with apple, her shoulders rising in the posture of a moment’s joy.

“Do you mind if I bring a friend?” I ask. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”