Chapter Four Clover

Chapter Four Clover

Monday morning, December 11, 2023

Clover watched the hills that lay ahead of her, waiting like great mages of a strange new land, as the plane taxied to the

terminal. She had thought, when she first landed at the airport, that she would feel some immediate transformation—a new sense

of self or a weight lifted. But, mostly, she felt tired.

It had been a five-hour flight, after all. Her legs and neck were stiff, and while she was used to early mornings on the farm,

the bright lights and loud chatter of the airport in Akron and now here in San Francisco were new for her.

Of course, she wasn’t a complete country mouse—she’d been on a plane before. It had just been a while. Maybe a decade or so,

if she counted, and she didn’t want to count, because then she’d have to focus on the reason she’d left in the first place,

which was that her farm—her family’s farm—was all she’d ever truly known.

A year ago, that wouldn’t have bothered her—or, well, it wouldn’t have bothered her so much . She could’ve pushed it aside, shoved it down, gritted her teeth, and looked out on the business her family had built, the

gorgeous house she had inherited, and the amazing man who loved her and been grateful.

But then Knox had pushed the question—and not for the first time. Not would she marry him. No, he’d asked that years ago. But when .

“Soon,” she’d say.

“I know, baby, but when?”

When, when, when. He wanted an actual, tangible, near-in-the-future date.

And it was only when she tried to finally give him an actual, tangible, logistically reasonable answer that she’d realized...

there wasn’t one.

The blow might’ve landed more softly for them both if her mom hadn’t died shortly thereafter.

I didn’t raise you that way.

Clover took a sharp intake of breath. That’s what her mother had said when Clover had tried to confide in her a couple months

before she died. They’d been sitting in the hospital room and Mae Mills had asked why she couldn’t just settle on a wedding

date, maybe soon, maybe while she was still alive. Clover had tried to placate her mother, but that final plea broke apart

the dam she’d kept contained all these years. “I have something to tell you, Mom,” she’d started. “About Hailey Blackwell.”

Of course her mother knew who Hailey Blackwell was. Clover had grown up with her from preschool through high school, just as she had with Knox. It was a small town, after all, with family lineages going back generations.

Clover could still remember the day she’d met Knox properly. He was all of five, wearing an overlarge trapper hat and snow

coat, and he was waddling through the heavy snow of his front yard, making huge, uneven tracks. A chicken had escaped its

coop in Clover’s yard, and Clover, freshly home from Sunday school and wearing nothing but a yellow sundress, had dashed out

her front door after it, bones shivering and eyes watering. Knox had seen the chicken cross his path and jumped, holding it

tight in his gloved hands. Then, seeing her shake in the cold, he offered her his trapper hat.

They were inseparable from then on, and everyone knew them as best friends: Knox and Clover, Clover and Knox, never the two

shall part. When their parents joked about their eventual marriage, Knox would blush, and Clover would scoff, and then the

two would run off together again, to make up stories in her parents’ attic or play hide-and-seek in his family’s stables.

When he offered to train as their farm manager after the last one moved cities, it was clear to everyone involved that it

was just another excuse for the two of them to spend even more time together, to plan even more adventures.

Then Knox’s parents divorced. They were sixteen, and Knox’s happy-go-lucky nature took a sharp turn. He was angry and lost,

and his mom, feeling her own sense of defeat and darkness, sent Knox away for the summer, to stay with relatives in Cincinnati.

It was the first time Knox and Clover had ever been apart. And that’s when Hailey appeared.

The two had always seen each other in classes, and in the hallways, and at the same haunts frequented by all their classmates. They would smile sometimes, maybe not others. They were polite at best. Then, one day, Clover walked into Hailey’s summer job at the local Baskin-Robbins. They talked. They talked some more. Days passed, and then weeks, and Clover went from finding excuses to visit Hailey at her job to both of them agreeing to hang out after, to see a movie, to walk around the mall in the next town over, to sleep over.

Nothing happened, not really. Just two new friends getting closer. Maybe Hailey’s gaze would linger too long on Clover when

she made her laugh. Maybe Clover’s fingers would brush against Hailey’s when they sat together on Clover’s balcony, looking

at the stars. Maybe, as they lay together at night, sharing a bed as friends do, limbs barely touching, Hailey’s breath against

Clover’s neck, or Clover’s lips near Hailey’s ear... maybe these things would feel less like an accident and more like...

maybe. Maybe more. Maybe yes. Maybe now .

Then, months later, Knox came home, all boyish and full of stories about his time away. He was eager to catch up, and so was

she, but... it also meant less time with Hailey. It meant feeling like she’d lost a truth she didn’t know she’d found.

It was the first week of school when everything changed. By then, something about Knox had shifted. Yes, he was a little taller, his voice a little deeper. But the way he looked at her, the way he spoke to her—all of that was different too. Softer, somehow, and more direct. Then one day, she’d been standing at her locker, fumbling with the code as she always did, when a deep voice tickled her ear.

“Hey, Clover.”

She jumped about three feet in the air. She turned and looked at Knox, who had appeared behind her, his backpack slung across

his shoulder, his morning apple half eaten in his left hand. She admonished him, as she always did, about being “so quiet

despite being so damn big,” and he laughed, as he always did. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You always say that,” she said, glaring playfully as she turned to face him fully. “And you always do it.”

He grinned as he took another bite of his apple, and Clover pretended to pout.

“You’re so mean to me.”

He laughed and rolled his eyes. “You’re right. I don’t know how you can stand me.”

“Lots of love and whiskey,” she replied automatically, exactly the way her mother would say to her father. She and Knox had

heard it once when they were kids and adopted it as their own favorite saying. They’d made this exchange so often that at

first it didn’t occur to her why he was slowly moving closer, his hand now above her head as he leaned against the locker,

all six feet of him towering over her, his blue eyes darkened with... Was it hope?

He took a deep breath, and she felt it in her lungs. “How much love?” he asked then.

How much love?

Clover had told Hailey about it hours later: Knox asked me out on a date. KNOX! she’d typed, because it was KNOX, her best friend, and not Knox, a potential love interest. But Hailey hadn’t responded with either incredulity or polite needling, as Clover expected. Instead,

she’d asked to come over that night, and sit on her balcony, and look at the stars.

“Clover,” Hailey had said then, as they looked up at the moon, bare legs crossed and knees gently touching. “Do you love Knox?”

“Of course I do,” Clover said, because she did.

“But do you love him? Like...” Hailey bit her bottom lip, and Clover pretended not to notice the way the skin pulled beneath her teeth.

Instead, she focused on the streaks of auburn the moonlight made in her hair and how much she wished Hailey’s brown eyes were

looking at her and not at their shoes.

“Like what?” Clover asked, ducking her head down so she could catch Hailey’s gaze. At night, when they were alone like this,

Clover had always been amazed how clearly she could see the planets when Hailey looked at her, how clearly she could see other

worlds.

“Like this,” Hailey said, and suddenly her lips were pressed against Clover’s. Her arm wrapped around Clover’s back, keeping

them both upright, and Clover was thankful, because in that second, she absolutely felt like she was going to fall. It was

only in the quiet seconds that followed—breaths heavy, eyes hooded, and stars shining like beacons in the night as Clover

pulled Hailey back in—that she realized that, God help her, she already had.

How much love? Knox had asked her. How much love?

But good Christian girls from Salem didn’t kiss each other. Hailey and Clover both knew that, and Clover didn’t know why Hailey seemed to have suddenly forgotten, but she wasn’t going to. That’s what she’d told herself the next morning, when she’d gone over to Knox’s house and told him, yes, she’d go out with him. And then, months later, yes, she’d be his girlfriend. And then, and then...

And then there she was ten years later, Knox Haywood’s fiancée, while the girl she’d fallen in love with first had disappeared

to a city where “good Christian girls” defined themselves. Hailey had texted her a couple weeks before graduating high school,

months after Clover had stopped responding:

I’m going to college in San Francisco.

I miss you.

I wish you and Knox the best.

This is what Clover had explained in the hospital, where her mother lay in bed, eyes boring into Clover’s with sharp scrutiny.

“I don’t think I can marry Knox,” Clover told her, unable to meet that piercing gaze. “I’m... Hailey and I were...”

“It was a summer crush,” her mother said, waving her hand as if to dismiss the concept. She turned away and closed her eyes.

“Girls always have crushes on each other. Teenagers explore, that’s normal.”

“No, Mom. It wasn’t exploration. It was... I would move heaven and earth for Knox. But I’ve never felt the way I did that summer with Hailey.”

“So, maybe you’d be happy with another man then. You’ve been with Knox your whole life...”

“Mom, you’re not listening to me.”

“I am, Clover.” Her mother sucked in a harsh breath. “And you’re wrong.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I didn’t raise you that way.”

That way. Those two words had made Clover’s world smaller than she’d ever thought possible. So small she felt as if she were suffocating.

So, they moved on from the subject. Her mom felt it was settled. “It’s just cold feet,” she said to Clover, and to herself,

probably, and Clover didn’t push. Not while her mother lay in a hospital bed. They found something lighter, something buoyant.

They found a way to laugh, that day, and those that followed.

But the problem was that no matter what her mom thought, she had raised Clover to be stubborn, principled, and forthright. So she had followed her heart and broken up with Knox anyway.

And then her mom had died.

And then her dad had had his heart attack.

And then, and then, and then .

Clover pulled her gaze away from the hills to look down at the baggage claim sticker she’d put on her boarding pass. She ran her fingers over the number, willing herself to feel something—some sort of pride, perhaps, for getting out of her funk and trying something new. But she also wondered, not for the first time, if she was stepping on her mother’s memory by being here in the first place—the city her little high school crush had run off to.

She’d had jitters that morning, fears of falling from the sky or other great disasters. While that alone was frightening,

what was worse was the brief flash of calm that followed, as if a part of her welcomed the thrill. Or was it the emptiness

that would come after?

She hated not knowing what she was feeling, what she wasn’t. And yet the one time she’d tried to be honest with herself and

those she loved, it had blown up in her face.

That’s why she kept waiting, staring out at the hills of San Francisco just past the tarmac, long after her fellow passengers

had scurried from the plane and tracked down their luggage.

She wondered how long she’d have to wait.

“You safe? Flight go smoothly?”

“All good, Daddy.” Clover’s flip phone pressed against her ear uncomfortably as the taxi rumbled along. “How is Bee—does she

seem nice?” She shifted, keeping her eyes tracked on the green foliage that flashed by her window.

“Oh yeah, lovely girl. And I saw Knox this morning too.”

“Mm.” She leaned her head against the window as her dad rambled on, telling her about how Bee and Knox had apparently met

on the road, and how he and Knox had talked a bit that morning about his moving plans, and how he was planning to go into

town to run errands, and...

Clover felt the urge to hit the brakes, even though she wasn’t the one driving.

“Knox is moving?”

She heard her father hesitate. “He didn’t tell you?”

“No.” She frowned. She had no right to feel angry or indignant. Of course Knox would want to move; he was probably as desperate

to get away from the farm as she was. Still, he could’ve at least told her. What was next—a new job? Maybe he was trying to extricate himself from her life entirely. Maybe this was the first step.

“Clover?” Her dad’s warm and concerned voice brought her back to herself. “You okay, baby?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. “Fine, Daddy.”

“You know, if you talked to him, I’m sure Knox would—”

“It’s fine, Daddy.” Her dad was one of the few people who had never suggested she’d made some sort of grave mistake by ending

her engagement with Knox, but she didn’t want to risk it. It was hard for some people to understand—how she could love him

but not be in love with him. How she could still want to be part of the fabric of his life but also not be, say, the mother of his future children.

They didn’t understand that, at the end of the day, he was still her best friend. Of everything she’d lost this past year,

why couldn’t she at least keep that?

Her father switched subjects and began talking about Bennie and how she’d started to befriend their horse, since the other chickens had rejected her. Clover allowed herself to feel amused and forced herself to focus on her father’s cheerful tone and the steady movement of the taxi. Once he was satisfied that she’d survived the first part of her trip with life and limb and they exchanged their “I love yous,” Clover turned her attention back to her temporary city. Knox was trying to move on with his life. She would try to do the same.

The trees disappeared into a complex system of highways and high-rises, and when the city came into view, the first thing

she noticed was a cable car with a faded red body and brown roof passing by. She was surprised to see a few people actually

hanging on to poles on the outside, just like she’d seen in movies. Well, that seems fun, she thought. She’d have to try one of those out before she left.

Soon her own car began to ascend, and she noted how steep the hills were as they traveled—up, up, up, up—toward a row of uniquely

colored Victorian homes and what she assumed was the corporate headquarters of a local bank. She felt like maybe the taxi

would dip backward at any second, and so would her stomach, but the car seemed to perch just fine on the side of the road.

“We’re here,” the driver said.

“Where?” she asked.

“Your destination,” he said. “That’s what the address says.”

“Oh.” Clover blinked, her eyes searching for anything that looked like it would hold the inside of Bee’s apartment. “Of course.

Thanks.” She didn’t actually know what it was supposed to look like on the outside—there weren’t any pictures of that—but

she assumed one of these picturesque homes that dotted the street must have a much more modern interior.

“That’ll be eighty dollars,” her driver said.

She winced. A part of her was convinced she should’ve taken the subway system, even if she’d never traveled underground in

her life, but she knew she wouldn’t have survived a trek up those hills, no matter how strong her legs were. She paid him

in cash—a requirement she gave herself to stay on budget—and as he grabbed her bags from the trunk, she took a moment to breathe

in the air and look around her.

She felt like she was standing on the edge of a new world, beneath a crisscross of phone lines. A steady bustle of cars climbed

past her on the street. Clover imagined them as massive billy goats traipsing over the mountains with engines strapped beneath

them. She laughed a little. This was kind of fun. Like she was an explorer on a grand new adventure.

Once the driver plunked the bags at her feet, she took one in each hand and began to walk toward the Victorian homes.

“Miss,” the driver called after her.

“Yes?”

“The building is right there.” He pointed at what she had thought was a bank, a concrete building more than fifteen stories

high with towering glass windows and a doorman stationed out front.

“Oh,” she said, breathless. “Thanks.”

And she thanked the doorman too, when he silently opened the door for her as she passed into the lobby. Clover tried not to gape. Beneath a spiral glass staircase that led to a grand piano was a sitting room outfitted with six massage chairs facing a waterfall. Beside it was the entrance to a cof fee shop, with the words castro cafécito in cursive neon lights stationed above it.

This is a hotel, Clover thought. This lady lives in a hotel.

“Your name, please?”

Clover looked at the security guard who had appeared before her, trying to remember the directions Bee had sent to her. “Oh,

I’m Clover. Mills. I’m a guest of Bee Tyler.”

The security guard checked her answer against a clipboard and then went behind his desk, typing something into the computer.

“Okay, thank you, Miss Mills. You know where you’re going?”

“Yes, thank you, sir.”

“You’re welcome. Happy holidays,” he said as he gestured toward the elevators to his left.

Clover mumbled the phrase in return and followed along, pressing the call button for the elevator and trying to subdue the

rising sense of awe. When the doors opened, she was met with the scowl of an impeccably dressed Black woman. She was looking

at her phone and completely oblivious to the woman with two huge suitcases standing in front of her.

“Um, excuse me,” Clover said, sidestepping the woman who seemed like she was going to walk right into her.

The woman looked up from her phone, and Clover resisted the urge to take a step back. She was... well, she was stunning, even frowning as deeply as she was. Her slick, straight bob framed her round face, and her deep brown skin seemed to shine against deep-set bright brown eyes. Clover’s tongue grew heavy, but the woman barely seemed to register her. She gave a quick flick of her eyes up and down Clover’s fresh-off-the-airplane appearance and then continued walking.

“Okay,” Clover muttered to herself. “Gorgeous and rude. Noted.” She hoped she wasn’t a neighbor. If she was, she’d be sure to steer clear.

She pulled her bags into the waiting elevator and pressed the floor number, though as the doors closed, she could still see

the woman’s retreating form, and honestly, she didn’t mind the view.

She sighed and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. “Sorry, Mom,” she mumbled, and then laughed quietly to herself. It was a

bad joke, but, you know, so was the last year. Clover chose not to focus on the lingering scent of jasmine the woman seemed

to have left behind, and moments later, she walked out into a clean, brightly lit hallway with rows of white doors that led

to what she assumed were million-dollar condos. Most were decked out in colorful wreaths—some in traditional Christmas colors

and a handful in white and blue, which she assumed belonged to those residents who celebrated Hanukkah.

She glanced at the arrows indicating the apartment numbers to either side of her and double-checked the email she’d printed

out the night before. Bee’s apartment was supposed to be to the left of the elevators, so she started in that direction.

“No!” she heard someone shout behind her, followed by loud panting. “Oh my—I’m so sorry. Could you—?”

Years of chasing animals on her and her neighbors’ farms had honed Clover’s instincts. She let go of her bags and leaped toward the dripping furball that was now chasing its own tail, distracted apparently from its original attempt at freedom. The little pit bull didn’t even squirm; it just hung limply in her arms, panting with a lopsided tongue as her owner, a tall East Asian woman, jogged toward her.

“You suck, ” the woman groaned as she took the dog from Clover’s arms. Then she gave Clover a tired smile. “And you’re an angel. Thank

you so much for grabbing this little jackass. She hates bath time.”

“Ah,” Clover said. “No problem, I’m kind of used to it.”

“You have dogs?”

“Chickens,” Clover supplied. “And a horse.”

The woman cocked her head, then took in the two bags at Clover’s feet. “You must be visiting someone, then. Unless you’re

turning one of the condos into a farm.”

“Not yet.” Clover smiled. “And yes, visiting a... friend.” Bee had told her that the building wasn’t yet cozy with short-term

subletters, so she opted to be vague.

“Did you get her?” someone else called from down the hall. While the first woman was lithe, with short black hair spiked with

gel, the second was white, short and curvy, with long bright red hair and a tattoo that ran up her leg, just beneath her jean

shorts.

“Yes, dear,” the first woman responded. “This happens a lot,” she said to Clover as the redhead ducked back inside the apartment.

“I’m Dee, by the way. That’s my wife, Leilani.”

Clover tried not to react. Wife, she thought. That wasn’t a word she heard thrown around by most women in Ohio. Or any woman, for that matter. She wondered if Hailey was married now or settled somewhere in the city. The thought made her happy and sad at the same time. Still, she smiled and offered her hand. “Clover. It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too,” Dee said. “And this little terror is Miss Cleo.” The dog continued to pant idly. “Thanks again for grabbing her.

Leilani had just walked through the door, and— bam —Missy bolted. Most of the time, she just wants to get away from the bath, so it’s not too hard to get ahold of her; other

times, someone will be walking out of their apartment or going down the stairs, and she’ll make a break for it, just because

she can. She’s a wily one. Anyway”—Dee took a breath—“I appreciate it. We’re just down the hall, obviously, so, you know,

if you need anything while you’re here, give us a shout.”

“Thanks,” Clover said, watching as Dee scolded Miss Cleo like a parent with a toddler. It reminded her of her dad and Bennie,

in a way that both warmed her and made her cold.

She already missed her dad and the animals, but it was too late to worry about that now. She grabbed ahold of her bags once

more and finally made her way to Bee’s apartment. It was easy to find once she turned the corner. Bee had told her to look

for an apartment with a little red mailbox out front, seated on a wood-carved red-and-white candy cane.

Cute, Clover thought.

She reached in and pulled out the key Bee had left for her. Then she took a deep breath and opened the door.

A view of the Castro District greeted her from across the room. There were more windows than walls, and in every direction

Clover looked, she could see the city.

Holy shit.

The pictures didn’t do the apartment justice. They had shown a small four-hundred-square-foot studio with nice, updated fixtures,

but that was about it. They’d shown the view too, but Clover had assumed those were just bonuses from Google Images: examples

of what she’d be able to see when she was outside . But here she was, on the tenth floor of a luxury high-rise, looking out across the entire city of San Francisco.

She felt like a queen or a mogul.

Clover walked to the window directly in front of her and looked down. Beneath her was a tennis court, a pool, and a small

dog park, all of them enclosed on the premises. Clover didn’t have a dog, but here, she could suddenly imagine herself with

one of those tiny handbag Chihuahuas, chauffeured alongside her as she took in spa treatments and ordered cocktails by the

hot tub.

She pressed her forehead against the window and allowed herself a moment to take all of it in—the view, of course, but also

the fact that she was here, in a brand-new city, in a hotel that pretended to be an apartment building, and for the first

time in her entire life, she was actually on her own. It felt so much better than being surrounded by people she’d always

known, and who had always known her, and still feeling completely and utterly alone.

Clover walked away from the window and to her bags, dragging them to the queen-sized bed on the right side of the room. She

needed to focus on something else—anything else—because the shock of hopefulness she suddenly felt was not only terrifying,

it was electrifying.

This was what she’d been waiting for.

For once, Clover heard a different memory of her mother’s voice in her head as she put her bags aside, sat on the bed, and

took stock of her surroundings. Okay, girl. The day is early and the chickens are fed. What are you going to do next? She smiled to herself, even as the fond saying put a little pain in her heart.

Then she put on the lightest jacket she owned and ventured back out into the world.