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29

I hate that dress," Flora tells Zephie, who fiddles the same yellow hem in her fingertips now.

"It used to be your favorite," Zephie says.

Flora reflects on her time with Moose and wonders if maybe it had never been about Jodi. Maybe Zephie didn't like the fact that Flora had a new friend. And so she manipulated her into getting rid of him.

The thought is frightening—what it means for the past but also what it means for today. What are Zephie's intentions? Why did she really show up after all these years? Flora shakes her head, dispensing with the notion that anything sinister is afoot. Next to her in the crib, Iris stirs. She's going to be hungry soon.

"We have to go downstairs," Zephie says. "To get her milk from the fridge."

"I'm not going down there," Flora replies.

She tries to straighten her legs in the crib, leaning back on her tailbone and extending her bare feet toward the sky. Her toes are tinged blue from the cold, and she wishes she had a pair of socks in here.

"Then what will Iris eat?" Zephie retorts.

As if on cue, Iris opens her mouth and wails. Flora bites her lip. She doesn't have a choice: she has to nurse. She pries off her bra, and her heavy breasts, now riddled with clogs, ache without the support.

Flora tries to convince herself that she can do this. But as she brings a crying Iris close to her chest, her mother's saggy breasts flash in her mind. She blinks hard, trying to disappear the image, and adjusts Iris crossways in a cradle hold. Then she cups her left breast in her hand and brings it to Iris's wide-open mouth.

The latch is shallow and immediately pinches Flora. She winces and pulls the baby off.

"Downstairs," Zephie chants. "Downstairs. There's milk downstairs!"

Flora ignores her and tries a second time to latch the baby. Once again, Iris's lips clamp down on the nipple, but Flora curls her toes and breathes through the pain. The sucking motion is unbearable against the rock-hard clogs. Flora uses her pinky to break the seal and pull Iris away. She can't take it.

Iris's mouth is red with Flora's blood. Her nipple wounds have reopened.

This won't work. Zephie is right.

"Of course I am!" the girl sings.

Flora climbs out of the crib and rifles through the closet, where she finds a large fabric wrap that one of Connor's friends sent them before Iris was born. Flora most definitely needs a video tutorial explaining how to use this thing, but she'll just have to make do with winging it. She wraps it again and again around her waist, then throws it over her shoulders and back around. Iris continues to cry as Flora finagles the baby into her makeshift carrier. She holds her hands beneath Iris's butt for extra support so there's no chance of her slipping out. Flora then finds a baggy open-front sweater on the floor of the closet and layers that on top.

"What if Mom tries to talk to me?" she asks Zephie, dreading the thought of running into her mother downstairs.

"Stick a fork in her neck," Zephie says.

Flora rolls her eyes. "Thanks for the help."

"I'm not joking."

A chill snakes its way up Flora's spine. She thinks of Moose and the violent ways in which Zephie suggested they rectify the problem. Flora then tries to not think about stabbing her mother in a major artery.

Downstairs, there's no sign of Jodi in the living room. Flora heads straight for the kitchen and opens the fridge. The pitcher of milk is almost full, and she exhales in relief. The refrigerator is still slightly cool inside, despite the power having been out, but she can see that the produce is starting to turn. She places the milk on the counter and smells it to be sure it's good, then she gathers a couple of bottles and her manual pump. Just before she's about to turn around and leave, she thinks to chug a giant glass of water and grab herself a few snacks.

With a complaining Iris wrapped tightly against her chest, Flora places all the items in a large salad bowl for transport. She's about to head back upstairs when she decides to check the breaker box. She snuggles a hat on top of Iris's tiny head and carries her to the garage, sets her in her bouncer, and heads to the circuit breaker. The cement floor is cold beneath her bare feet.

She examines the board, hopeful that switching the circuits back and forth might produce some kind of miracle. But nothing happens no matter how many times she fiddles with them. Iris cries from her bouncer, and when Flora looks toward her, she notices the shelves on the far wall. They seem different somehow. She narrows her eyes in concentration. An itch sprouts on Flora's brain as she stares.

something is off

She walks toward the shelves slowly, as if approaching a skittish animal. The boxes have been rearranged. She's sure of it. Her mother must have been out here again. But what was she looking for this time?

Something hiss, hiss, hisses in the wall, and Flora knows it's just the pipes, but the sound still startles her back to the present moment. She needs to feed Iris.

Inside, she situates herself on the armchair and offers Iris milk from the fridge. Flora doesn't do the math of how old the milk must be—a Google chart would surely tell her it has gone bad. But it smells okay, and she doesn't have any other option.

Iris sucks ferociously at the bottle as Flora stares out the back window into the dark void of the night. Her mother must be asleep upstairs. The house is silent save for Iris's suck suck sucking.

But then, outside: a break in the clouds. The bright moon illuminates the backyard briefly. Flora's eyes narrow as she tries to see more clearly. There, in the snow, are footprints. Her breath catches, and a fire ignites in her stomach. The trail of prints goes from the house to the woods, with no sign of returning tracks.

where the hell did you go Mom

Her mother does not have proper footwear. She showed up at Flora's door in simple leather boots that would in no way hold up in deep snow. And did she even have gloves? A hat? She will freeze to death out there.

"So what?" Zephie whispers. "Let her."

Flora briefly considers this before sighing and hurrying Iris through the last ounce of her bottle. Flora burps the baby as she walks to the back door. When she opens it, a gust of freezing air enters the house, and Iris reacts loudly to the sudden temperature plunge.

"Mom?" Flora calls out. "Mom!" She shouts loudly, but her words are immediately swallowed by the snow. There's no way someone in the woods could hear her. What is her mother doing out there? How will she find her way around in the dark?

"This is just like her," Flora says out loud. "The second I'm mad, she finds a way to turn it around and make me worry instead."

Flora stands, knowing what she must do but dreading it, willing her mother's figure to appear suddenly from behind the trees. But as the minutes pass, Flora is increasingly nauseous with guilt. What if something happened out there? What if her mother is hurt—or worse?

She closes the back door to preserve what little warmth they have left in the house. Then she sets about gathering warm clothes for both herself and the baby, bundling Iris tight against her chest. Flora puts on one of Connor's coats that is large enough to zip Iris inside as well. As she shoves her feet into her boots, stamping the heels down to squeeze them in, regret and resentment whirl in her gut.

Her mother better have a good reason for doing whatever she has done.

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