Chapter_30

The blood hit the ground before Rosie had even pulled the knife off her belt, dark circles against pale straw. The chicken bobbed its head playfully in and out of the silver cone. Rosie wiped her nose with her sleeve, leaving a trail of blood on the cuff. A harsh wind whipped through a stand of trees.

There was just enough light to make out her reflection in the farm’s dirty bathroom mirror. She ran the water hot. She cleaned her face and tried to stem the bloody nose with toilet paper, but it disintegrated. Blood had run into her mouth. It tasted like pennies. She pressed the back of her wrist to her nostril. For the first time, Hank had left her alone.

Now it was February and freezing. The ground was hard, and the trees were naked and gray. Dylan and Lark had made preparations to move out, which had improved Jordan’s mood. Still, Rosie felt like she and Jordan had two marriages. In one, they made their best attempt at happiness. They found comfort in a silent agreement to pretend nothing had happened between them. In the other, resentment flowed in both directions, and Rosie felt powerless. They said “I love you” constantly but anxiously, and whenever they slept together, Rosie rummaged for the Queen Anne’s lace and swirled it into a glass.

She knew the bloody nose could mean she was pregnant, and the knowledge felt like a key turning deep inside her, aligning the pins in the lock of a terrible fear. She had dreamed the night before of giving birth to a blue chicken egg, and she had woken up feeling pregnant. She felt a wave of vertigo, and a familiar dread settled over her: she could not be happy with Jordan. He didn’t know her, and maybe he never had. When he looked at her, he was looking over her shoulder.

She returned to the chicken and removed the knife from its sheath.

Jordan must have felt it, too. Rosie was less interested in the things he wanted to talk about. What were those things, even? Technology, finances, reality TV? She could see that broaching these topics was his best attempt at connection. He was polite to her, and she was bored of him. She had tried so hard to invite him in. But he never asked her any questions. It was as if when he opened his mouth a radio turned on to broadcast whatever was at the surface of his mind, and it never had anything to do with her.

She cleaned and butchered the chickens, vacuum-sealed them in plastic, dated them, and piled them into the cooler, then sat in the truck and waited for the heat to work. The steering wheel was freezing, and she gripped it through the cuffs of her coat. She put the truck in gear and coasted down the long driveway. She no longer had to look at the dashboard to know when to shift, and she didn’t need GPS. She left the radio off and made her deliveries. She liked the sounds of the engine.

If she was pregnant, she could get an abortion, but her dread wasn’t specifically about motherhood. In fact, she could easily imagine herself as a mother when Jordan was not in the picture. All the components of the dream she’d shared with him—the walks in the woods, the handmade toys, the tiny sheepskin slippers—were real and within reach. She knew this because Dylan and Lark had shown her how her life could look, and they weren’t gone, not quite.

Her last stop was the general store. She tapped the toe of her boot against the entryway mat, the snow shedding in a perfect, thin print, then melting. Sasha was working the register alone. Rosie lifted the chickens easily onto the counter and passed her the invoice. “One other thing I need,” she said. The pregnancy tests were nestled between boxes of Israeli soap and local deodorant. She took one and, sliding it across the counter, braced herself for Sasha to make a comment. But she didn’t say anything, which was worse. Rosie stared at her own hands. Blood had made its way into the creases of her knuckles, her cuticles, beneath her wedding ring.

“I’m bummed about Dylan and Lark leaving,” she said.

“Leaving?” Sasha said, handing the test back to her. “Weren’t you the one to kick them out?”

She arrived home just before dark—the days were so brief—the snow sticky and insistent. Outside the fold, Dylan shoveled the walkway, and the child followed her with a tiny plastic shovel. Rosie’s headlights slid over their backs. The child wore an enormous puffy purple coat and yellow mittens. Dylan turned and held up an arm to shield her eyes from the beam of light before turning back to the walkway, her hand moving—protectively, it seemed—to the child’s back. Rosie froze, watching them, barely suppressing an urge to press her palm into the horn. The child tipped backward onto his butt and for a moment didn’t seem to register the fall. But then his face twisted into a pained, bewildered shape. Dylan lifted him off the ground. She said something to him and bounced him a few times in her arms. He continued to cry, and she brought him inside, abandoning their shovels in the snow, never looking back at Rosie, who put the truck in Park.

Jordan was on his way back from the city, and the house was silent. Thin, blue fuzzy light filtered in through the southwest windows. Rosie put on a kettle, replaying Dylan’s arm gesture, trying to construe it as a greeting, though she knew it hadn’t been.

From the kitchen she could see the woodstove flickering in the fold, Dylan removing the child’s mittens and coat. She intensely wanted to be there instead of where she was: alone, in the cold, flat dark of her house.

You’re good, she imagined Dylan saying to the child. You’re OK. Then she imagined herself in the living room with them, the fire roaring, the child recovering from his fall with a mug of milk. A kettle whistled.

It was Rosie’s kettle. She made herself a cup of tea and lit her own fire. She imagined telling Jordan about the dream, the nosebleed, the possibility that she was pregnant. It made her happy, to picture him happy. But this thought was pushed aside by another. The three of them—Rosie, Jordan, and the baby—living in one of the McMansions in the same subdivision as Jordan’s parents, their family becoming more and more insular. The thought made her feel claustrophobic and lonely. The only thing to do outside the house would be to drive somewhere else and buy something. That was what her child would learn how to do—to drive somewhere and buy something.

She picked up her phone and found herself calling her mother. The phone rang several times, and Rosie was sure it would go to voicemail, but it didn’t. “Hi, Ozie,” her mother said, and Rosie considered ending the call there.

“Hey, Mom.” She felt the pressure building behind her eyes.

“I thought maybe you had fallen off a cliff.”

“You could have called if you thought I’d fallen off a cliff.”

“The phone rings both ways, you know.”

“I know,” Rosie said.

“Well, what’s up?”

“Things have been a little stressful here.”

The phone fell silent, and Rosie waited for her mother to ask her a question. “Are you still there?” She looked at her phone to make sure they were still connected.

“Mm-hm,” her mother said distractedly. “Is the cold getting to you? I don’t know what you expected.”

“Cold?” Rosie said. “No. I mean, it’s cold, but it’s not any different from anywhere else.”

That wasn’t true. The winter days in Scout Hill were colder and darker than any she’d experienced before.

“Uh-huh,” her mother said. “Well, that’s good.”

“The house has been a much bigger project than we expected,” Rosie said. “And things with Jordan are a little... strained. And,” she said, “I think I might be pregnant.” She wiped a tear from her cheek. “And I’m not sure I want—I don’t know what to do.”

“You could take a test,” her mother said.

“No, I mean—if I’m pregnant, I don’t know what I would do.”

“Well,” her mother said, “I felt the same way when I was pregnant with you.” Rosie wasn’t sure whether to take this as a comfort or a criticism. “Anyway,” her mother continued, “being decisive was never really your strong suit. Just like your father. Even when you were a kid, it was always I want you to read me this story, no, I want that story.”

“But that’s how children are,” Rosie said. “Surely it was worth it?”

“What was worth what?”

“Having me,” Rosie said. “Was having me worth it?”

“I love you, Rosie, but I was not a happy mother. It’s just the truth.”

Jordan pulled into the driveway. “I have to go, Mom,” Rosie said.

“Of course you do.”

She watched as Jordan unbuckled his seat belt, looked at his phone, and glanced up at her anxiously. Instinctually, she checked her own phone. An email from his mother was at the top of her inbox. It was addressed to Jordan and her, with Dylan, Lark, Hank, Sasha, and Callie copied. She stared at the subject line: Accepted offer on the Bakker Estate.

See below, Bridey had written. Thrilled this was so easy. We’ll have an expedited closing.

Then, three texts from Dylan.

sorry rosie, didn’t mean for you to find out like that

we finalized the offer earlier today

hope u understand

Rosie stared out the window, watching as Jordan quickly made his way from the car to the doorstep. “Babe,” he said, swinging open the door. “I didn’t know Bridey was going to do that. I swear I didn’t know.”