Chapter_33

Jordan slept beside Rosie on the mattress on the floor, the wide expanse of his back to her, his breath heavy and even. It was three weeks after Dylan had plunged the opaque contents of the vial inside her. She was incapacitated by nausea. She groped her way to the bathroom in the dark, steadying herself against the toilet tank with one hand. A band of pressure had built behind her eyes. I didn’t start getting headaches until I had you, she heard her mother say. The light fixture swayed. She held back her hair and waited, but the wave passed.

She’d kept the pregnancy test from the general store in a box of tampons. Now she felt around in the dark to find it. Every feeling contradicted a different feeling. She was freezing but sweaty, nauseated but hungry, exhausted but wired. Her thighs shook slightly as she peed on the flimsy strip of paper. The test would confirm what she already knew for certain. Her nipples were tender, swollen, and, for some reason, darker—and now her period was late.

She used the flashlight on her phone to watch the sharp pink line appear, and when it did, she felt as though she were at the end of a long, quivering diving board.

Jordan had laid out the plan: Rosie would stay a few extra hours to finish her last shift at Hank’s. Jordan would get a head start so he could be there when the storage cube landed in Connecticut.

She wrapped the test in toilet paper, stuffed it into the trash, and got back under the covers. There was Jordan, next to her, and there was Dylan, three hundred feet away. Either one of them could claim partial ownership of what was happening inside her.

Jordan turned to her in his sleep. She stared at his face until he was completely unrecognizable. She envisioned her life with him in Connecticut: a house so big they could lose track of each other, a four-car garage that smelled like new concrete, filled with boxes of things they didn’t need but could not throw out, a faux waterfall pumping into a bright, chlorinated pool, its heater relentlessly groaning.

And then she thought of the fold. The guinea hens, the jars of tea, the herbs. The good lighting, the obedient fires, the skylight. The toolshed, the hikes, the animals, the pollinators bobbing from flower to flower. The smell of dirt, leaves, and pine needles. The electric smell of snow. Rain on rocks, moss on rocks, lavender mountains, ice-cold swimming holes, hot sauna, overgrown mint, wet mountain air, a hummingbird vibrating by a flower. A gearshift, a fogged windshield. And Dylan, of course, who commanded every space she entered. Dogs sat for her. Furniture fit precisely in their corners.

The night had started to lighten. Her head felt staticky and heavy. She could sleep for another hour, or she could get an earlier start than usual, finishing the deliveries by midmorning, the rest of her day open like a palm. Jordan would be gone by the time she returned. She dressed while he slept and drove to the farm. She was now able to process the chickens while her mind was elsewhere. The blood didn’t bother her, the thrashing, the cold. She’d bought her own knife, which Hank had taught her to sharpen against a stone. She sealed the chickens; she made the deliveries. She placed the knife in the footwell of the passenger seat and navigated home. She opened and closed a text from Jordan: Let me know when you hit the road!

Back at the house, Dylan, Lark, Sasha, and Hank had already started arranging the living and dining rooms. Dylan’s hand-stitched leather chair. A vintage yellow lamp. A fiddle-leaf fig tree. A tall straw basket, votive candles, a slender bookshelf. Rosie made her way to the kitchen and filled Lark’s kettle with water. Dylan carried an antique wooden desk upstairs. More texts from Jordan came in, all at once.

Have you left? Hope traffic isn’t too bad. This place is actually bigger than I remember!

Cube update!, he wrote, with a photo of their entire lives packed up like Tetris.

Lots of Oreos here

My dad wants to know if you want steak tonight?

My brothers are here, fair warning...

Or salmon?

Maybe salmon...

I’m saying salmon hope that’s OK

Rosie placed her phone in the wooden box by the front door at the same time that Hank appeared with a heavy-looking rocking chair.

“Can I help with that?” Rosie said as he pushed through the entryway.

“You shouldn’t be lifting anything,” Hank said. “Which room are you taking?”

“Oh,” Rosie said. “Downstairs? If that’s OK.”

“Of course. I’ll move your mattress.”

Lark was in the living room, arranging books on different surfaces. A zine about which first ladies were probably queer, an art book featuring a sculptor from New Zealand who made felted lambswool portraits of her lovers. She’d cleared space on the shelves for her herbs, which fit perfectly in eight neat rows. Next to the shelves was a pine storage bench that Dylan had built. “Could I look through here for a blanket?” Rosie said.

“Please do! I just finished a quilt,” Lark said. “It’s near the bottom.”

Rosie opened the top of the bench and sorted past gauzy cotton throws, linen tablecloths, hand-dyed pillowcases, raw silk picnic blankets, until she found it—a white quilt with indigo pinwheels. She set up her bedroom. She had so few things—finally. Hank brought in her mattress and set it on the floor. It was the only piece of furniture in the room, her own personal cloud.

From the bedroom, she listened as the front door stuttered open and shut. She dressed the mattress and lay down, fatigued, her hunger turning to nausea. More sounds: footsteps on floorboards, an occasional burst of laughter, the oven preheating, a fire cracking. Dylan and Hank shouted directions: Turn it sideways. OK, now set it down. You push, I pull. Someone put an Elvis album on the record player. Then, the thunk of boots and Sasha’s voice, announcing the unsold pastries she’d brought home from the general store, and a knock at the door. “Rosie?”

“Come in,” Rosie said, and Sasha turned the knob.

“Hungry? How are you feeling?”

Rosie sat up. “I think I’m starving, but I’m not sure.”

“I remember that,” Sasha said. “I would dream of miso soup. And Cheetos.”

Rosie salivated. “I would kill someone for a Cheeto.”

“Lark’s pickling some beets,” Sasha said. “It’s almost the same.”

In the kitchen, mason jars were lined up on the counter like a little army. Lark measured out the vinegar, water, and sugar. The child stood on a handmade wooden stool next to her and added whole garlic cloves to each jar. “Now some peppercorns,” Lark said, shuffling them into his small, plump palm. He dispersed the peppercorns unevenly between the jars.

Rosie heard a phone buzzing in the box by the door. Her phone? Someone else’s? The thought of Jordan trying to reach her made her stomach lurch. “Can I help?” she asked.

“Of course,” Lark said. She held her palm to Rosie’s cheek. “Are you feeling OK? I’m going to make you a ginger elixir.”

Rosie took over chopping the vegetables. Next to the beets were okra, cabbage, and jalape?os. She filled the jars to the top and sealed them while the child stared up at her. “Stranger,” he announced.

“That’s not a stranger, that’s our friend,” Sasha said, swooping in. “That’s Rosie. Rosie lives with us. We all live together now.”

“Hi again,” Rosie said to the child, holding up her hand. “Nice to see you.”

“You live with us,” the child said warily, staring at Rosie.

She chopped the vegetables until there were no more jars. Soon an entire shelf in the refrigerator was lined with pickles. Another shelf housed a hunk of meat covered in salt and a few loose carrots. To the left of that, duck prosciutto that Dylan had cured herself. The wooden box by the door buzzed again and didn’t stop until she silenced the call from Jordan.

Hello?he wrote a few hours later. You OK? I’m worried.

Rosie posted a photo of the pickles to Instagram. Last of the winter harvest, she captioned it.

Jordan messaged her.

Are my texts coming through? What’s your ETA?

For dinner that night, everyone—Dylan, Lark, Hank, Sasha, Callie, and Rosie—sat around a dining table that Dylan had built. It was apparently a prototype with flaws, but Rosie couldn’t tell what the flaws were. It looked perfect to her and still smelled vaguely like varnish. They ate risotto with squash from Lark’s garden, their plates set atop hand-quilted place mats that each depicted a different farm animal. A horse, a cow, a goat, a sheep, a pig, a duck. Rosie had the sheep, its curious face tilted up at her. Dylan lit candles and, taking her seat, started talking about where she planned to put up a new wall. They would divide the living room, Dylan said, to make an extra bedroom. And they’d create an alcove in Rosie’s bedroom, where the crib would go. “Baby,” the toddler added.

“That’s right,” Dylan said. “I’m building a crib for the new baby.” She tossed a small piece of carrot to Justin, who lay on his bed near the table.

“Tesla,” the baby said, looking at Rosie.

“That’s a nice name for a baby,” Rosie said, and she was pleased that this got a laugh.

“Have you heard from Jordan?” Sasha asked.

Rosie cleared her throat and patted her mouth with a napkin. “He got to Connecticut a few hours ago.”

“How’d he take it that you’re not going?” Callie asked.

“I haven’t told him quite yet,” Rosie said.

Everyone stared at her, then at one another until Dylan broke the silence. “Where does he think you are?”

“On my way to his parents’ place,” Rosie said. An unfamiliar calm had overtaken her.

Everyone seemed to be on the edge of speaking, but nobody did, and they finished their meal in an awkward silence.

They did the dishes in a smooth assembly line. Hank cleared, Rosie scrubbed, Sasha rinsed, Dylan dried, Lark stacked. Callie put the toddler to bed. The box holding everyone’s phones continued to buzz.

“That’s probably mine,” Rosie said.

Dylan looked at her. “Don’t you want to get it? Is it him?”

“I don’t know,” Rosie said, answering both questions. She found her phone in the box, lit up with missed calls from Jordan and a text from Alice.

You OK? Jordan is worried and asked me to text you to see if you’re alive? Your location says you’re still in Scout Hill.

Rosie texted back: I’m alive! She scrolled through her camera roll, opened Instagram, and posted a carousel of images she’d taken the past several months. An orange and pink sunset erupting over the mountains, freshly laid eggs in Hank’s chicken coop, Lark’s linens hanging on the clothesline. The likes arrived right away, and so did another call from Jordan, which she silenced.

The nausea set back in at around midnight. She went outside and let the fierce, cold wind push her. Infinite stars burned through the black night. Inside, everyone was in bed; everything was quiet. She was by herself, her life belonging, finally, to no one else.