Chapter_25

It was a blistering winter, and Rosie and Jordan had woken up to snow. Jordan hadn’t brought up the prospect of a baby or a move to Connecticut since his mother’s visit weeks before. They sat on their living room floor, playing gin rummy. Jordan was waiting for traffic to die down before he left to meet Noguchi in the city. He drew a card from the deck and discarded it. Rosie stretched out her legs and reached a socked toe to meet his. The wood in the fireplace hissed and frothed.

A car passed by the house. As soon as Jordan heard the sound of it, he looked out the window and watched like a Doberman until it was fully out of sight. “I tried to get the house unlisted from all those blogs,” he said. “I think it’s helping.”

It was true, they hadn’t had any tourists since their dinner with his mother. Rosie picked up the entire discard pile, played a trio of twos, and discarded. Jordan refreshed his map to update the traffic report. “What will you do while I’m gone?”

“I’m not sure,” Rosie said, reorganizing her hand. “Aside from work.”

Hank had sold Rosie an old truck that had been sitting unused at the farm. If Jordan was happy to have his car back, he didn’t show it. He hadn’t left Scout Hill since his mother’s visit. He’d taken all his meetings with Noguchi virtually, behind the closed door of the nursery, which Rosie interpreted as part of his promise to stay and put down roots. Rosie had kept her promise, too; she’d stayed away from Dylan. But if anything, she was thinking of Dylan more than before. She was grateful for the windows looking onto the fold; she was aware of every light coming on and off, every piece of wood carted into or out of their home, every gallon of paint, every saw and panel of drywall. The guinea chicks had arrived and huddled together beneath a heat lamp in the coop, which Dylan tended to each day, often with the toddler clinging to her hand. No activity was too small to pique Rosie’s interest, and her imagination had become her favorite place to dwell. She still had Dylan’s handkerchief, and she sometimes thumbed it in the pocket of her work jacket, debating whether to keep it or to return it as an excuse to visit her.

If Jordan’s feelings were still hurt from their argument, she couldn’t tell. Maybe he was buoyed by having gotten what he wanted, his fantasy now tinged with reality; she hadn’t reupped her birth control. For her own part, she privately conjured Dylan’s mouth on her. Once, while straddling Jordan, she was surprised to find Lark in the fantasy. In this version, Lark knit baby clothes downstairs while Dylan was on her knees in the antique porcelain tub, her open mouth reaching for Rosie, the water running over her wide, freckled face, the hard bathroom tiles shockingly cold against Rosie’s back. Did Lark know what was happening in the shower? That part was vague. The important thing was that Lark existed, happily attending to a pair of baby slippers, while Rosie held Dylan back by a fistful of red hair, then finally loosened her grip, giving her what she wanted. She kept this scene to herself, along with the fact that each time, afterward, she would slip into the bathroom, run the tap, and take the Queen Anne’s lace, its vegetal taste lingering in her mouth.

She drew a card from the deck. “What about you?”

“What about me?” Jordan refreshed Google Maps.

“What are you and Noguchi going to do?”

“Oh,” Jordan said, as if considering it for the first time. “We’re getting ready to soft-launch the app.” He began to describe their KPIs for app downloads, conversion, and churn. Rosie’s thoughts snapped to Dylan. The prospect of being home alone while Dylan was yards away made her feel like a jumpy animal.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I think Noguchi wants us to expand the offices up here.”

“Up here?” Rosie said. “Like, in Scout Hill?”

“Right. We’ll find an office space in town. And then, you could live your life, and I could basically keep working on the app with Noguchi, but up here. We’ll finally start pulling in enough money to fix up the house and start, you know...” He played another straight.

“Start what?”

“We can focus on our family.” He looked up at her. “We can have it all. I’ll have a good salary, we’ll be up here like you want, we’ll have a baby, Noguchi will be nearby...”

Rosie looked around the room, dread descending on her. Jordan had moved around their furniture so that it was now arranged the same way it had been in their Park Slope apartment, each piece oriented to optimize TV watching. She could see him now on his work headset. She could see him dragging a standing desk into the living room. She watched him gesture happily as he explained their future to her.

“And with that,” he said, laying down three aces and tossing his last card, “I’m out.” He leaned over the cards and kissed her on her cheek. She watched as he took his keys from the table by the door. “I’ll drive back up tomorrow,” he said, pocketing his phone. He zipped his coat and closed the door behind him. She heard the tires on gravel, then nothing. She sat for a moment, watching the pale, struggling fire, and brought a hand to her cheek where he’d kissed her. Then she pulled out her phone and opened a text to Dylan. Hi.

They had painted the living area of the fold, including the rafters, a dusty brick, which, combined with the warm lighting, gave Rosie the feeling of being inside a terra-cotta pot. A new shelf held an altar of brightly colored candles, a bundle of sage, a painting of a cow, and a small hand mirror. A crock of native grasses and a pile of journals sat beside Dylan’s leather armchair, which faced a thick, wool rug. A fire snapped in the woodstove. Of course they had thought to keep their wood covered with a tarp. Rosie sat on the kitchen counter while Dylan cracked two ice trays, dropped the cubes into a glass bowl, ran the water low, and refilled the trays. “Could you get the freezer for me?” she said.

Rosie slid off the counter and opened the freezer. A cold fog hung in the air between them. She thought of mornings in the Alps, of the hour before the sun lifted the moisture from grass. Dylan uncorked a bottle of bourbon and placed the cork in Rosie’s palm. She measured the bourbon into the cocktail shaker while Rosie fiddled with the cork, every part of her awake.

“Do you like bourbon? I should have asked,” Dylan said. She poured the drink into two glasses and took an orange from the fruit bowl. She took a knife and cut into the rind, releasing its bitter fragrance, then stirred the drinks with the peel.

“Where’s, um...” Rosie rolled the cork between two fingers. “Where’s Lark?”

Dylan looked up at her. “She’s doing part of the Appalachian Trail with Justin. They both love the cold.” She stood directly in front of Rosie. They were the same height: Rosie sitting on the counter, Dylan standing, holding out her palm in the space between them. Rosie placed her hand in Dylan’s, her pulse racing.

“The cork,” Dylan said.

“Oh,” Rosie said, her face on fire. The misunderstanding was etching itself into her brain, ready to repeat itself for the rest of her life. She craved her phone to distract her from the embarrassment, but her phone was in the box by the front door. She gave the cork to Dylan, who sealed the bottle, slid it back on the shelf, and handed Rosie her drink.

“Thank you,” Rosie attempted to say, but she had temporarily lost her voice and had to clear her throat and repeat herself.

Dylan made her way to the sofa. She sat with her legs parted, her glass resting on her knee. Rosie sipped her drink from the kitchen, the distance between them impossibly long. The burn of the alcohol pulled her out of her self-consciousness. An ice cube brushed her lips, and her mind went to the freezing lake. Some mornings in the Alps, she would wake up to a thrum between her legs and a fantasy just behind her eyes: the image of Zoe’s back pressed against her; her underwear pushed to the side; Rosie’s fingers inside her.

“I was thinking I’d never hear from you again,” Dylan said. She looked up at Rosie and smiled.

Rosie swirled her drink. “I’m sorry. It took some time to recover from that dinner. I promised Jordan I’d see less of you.”

“He asked for that?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Rosie forced herself to look directly at Dylan, who brought her drink to her lips.

“I think you know why.” She was dizzy with desire, unable to sustain the eye contact.

“And then what?”

“And then he went to the city.”

“When?”

“About ten minutes ago,” Rosie said. Dylan laughed at this, and Rosie smiled at the floor. “He has this fantasy for our life that he just narrated to me. He’s happy living here, so long as living here looks exactly like living the way we used to. He thinks he’s compromising, but he’s not. It is so awful to be misunderstood so completely—” She felt a burn behind her eyes and looked up at Dylan. “You are so far away. Come back here.”

Dylan’s gaze fell on Rosie’s ankle, then on her hands, then her collarbone. She finally looked straight into Rosie’s eyes. Neither of them moved. The feeling was entirely beyond the bounds of what her body could tolerate. Every nerve was alive. This time, she refused to look away. Dylan stood. Soon she was close. She set down her drink on the countertop and rested her hands on either side of Rosie. “Was there something you needed?” she said.

She smelled like cedar. Rosie ran a hand up her neck and held the back of her head, tugging a handful of her hair. Dylan kept one hand on the counter and moved the other up Rosie’s thigh, her touch light but charged, like she was thumbing the edge of a knife. Her face was close, her hair in Rosie’s fist. “Go ahead,” Dylan said, and Rosie did. Her lips were soft, her cheeks almost downy. She lifted Rosie off the counter and carried her to the bed. It was a small room, lit by a single bedside lamp with a dim, matte bulb. The bed was low and covered in a cloudlike quilt. Rosie caught her reflection in a tall mirror across from the bed. Dylan took the skin between Rosie’s thumb and index finger into her mouth. Rosie slid a hand into Dylan’s jeans. The wetness clung to the cotton of her underwear.

Every part of Rosie had a pulse. Dylan stood at the edge of the bed. She unzipped Rosie’s jeans and yanked them from the cuffs. It occurred to Rosie that with Jordan, she was always taking off her own clothes.

“Turn over,” Dylan said. Rosie obeyed, her face against the mattress, her pulse hammering. There was no thinking, there was nothing at all besides the taut pleasure of anticipation. Dylan’s hands were on her, pulling her underwear down her thighs. Yes, she needed it. There was nothing beyond the need. Outside, wind rattled through the trees. She closed her eyes. She listened to the clink of a brass belt unbuckling.