Chapter_35

He held her tightly. She buried her face in his puffer jacket. His hand gripped the back of her head. “You’re OK?” he asked, and then he answered his own question: “You’re OK.” They stood on the threshold of the house. His Tesla idled outside, the driver’s door still open. He had beat the Google Maps estimate by twenty-five minutes. In one hand, he held his small, shiny ax.

“I’m sorry,” Rosie whispered. Her snot was cold and wet against his jacket. “I’m so sorry.”

Jordan pushed past her into the house.

“It’s gone,” Rosie said, following him.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Jordan said. Cold air came in through the open storm door. She could feel him appraising the scene: the smashed pickle jars, the cereal and sugar on the floor. He walked quickly, with a determination she didn’t recognize. He moved around the house with a forceful, methodical stride. Rosie followed a few feet behind, the adrenaline working its way through her body again. He kicked open every door and turned on all the lights, gripping the ax tightly.

“Be careful,” she said, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

“Stand back,” he said, kicking open the final door: the door to their empty bedroom.

There was no bear. Just Dylan’s things, strewn across the floor. He took it in. “All right,” he said. “All right. It’s gone. It’s all right.”

She followed him back downstairs.

“What would you have done if you’d found it?”

“I would have killed it.” He looked at Rosie. “I am so, so mad at you.”

“I know,” Rosie said.

“You have no idea.”

“I know.”

“Where’s...”

“I don’t know,” Rosie said. “Camping in a yurt with everyone else.”

“Camping? They just left you here?”

“I didn’t want to go,” Rosie lied. The adrenaline had begun to leave her, and she began fighting tears.

“What is it?” he said. “Is it the bear? It’s gone. OK? It’s gone.”

Rosie shook her head. She delivered the news to the floor. “I’m pregnant.”

“What? You are?” He reached for her hand and moved the pad of his thumb over her knuckles. She looked up at him. If he had been suffering over the previous weeks, he was hiding it well. He had kept up with his shaving routine; his face looked well-moisturized. There were no circles under his eyes. He appeared to have found time to get a haircut. “And it’s mine? Wait,” he said, laughing a little. “Of course it’s mine. No one else here could—unless some random guy—”

“No,” Rosie said. “There was no random guy.”

He squeezed her hand tightly. “And you’re—you’re happy about it?”

“I’m sorry I stayed here,” Rosie said, only half answering him. “Can we please go home? I want to go home now.”

Jordan looked at the mess. “I’ll grab your things.”

“It doesn’t matter. Let’s just go.”

“Wait,” Jordan said, his eyes narrowing. Rosie followed his gaze to the Lise Bakker painting.

“We’re taking that.”

“Jordan—”

“No. We’re taking it. It’s ours.”

He marched inside, unhooked the painting from the wall, carried it to the car, slid it across the back seat, and secured it with a seat belt. Rosie got into the passenger seat. The car was still warm. “Direct me to Bridey’s house,” Jordan said loudly, and his female-voiced GPS enthusiastically obeyed.

Rosie watched the house grow smaller in her side-view mirror. Jordan turned on NPR. The segment was about a junior representative in Congress who had fabricated his entire résumé before being elected and was now being ridiculed by his own party. He had pretended to be from a lower-class dairy farming family in Illinois when he’d actually grown up in a wealthy suburb of Chicago, with a butler.

They passed Hank’s farm, then the trailhead leading to the sauna, then the general store. Rosie closed her eyes and leaned her cheek against the cold window. NPR had moved on to a prerecorded BBC broadcast about the debt ceiling. She turned down the volume. “What does your family—what does your mom know?” she asked. “Just so that I’m prepared, when we get there.”

“You can call her Bridey.”

“Sorry. What does Bridey know?”

“I told her that something came up at the farm and you had to stay an extra few weeks.”

Rosie stared straight ahead. “And the other stuff?”

“You mean that you had an affair with our tenant? No,” Jordan said. “I didn’t tell her that.” He merged onto the highway. “What about you? Have you told your mom we sold the place?”

“No. She’ll think I’m a failure.”

“Have you told her that you’re...”

“No,” Rosie said, shivering. “I haven’t told her anything.”

“Well, Bridey is kind of like your mom now,” Jordan said. “So you can talk to her. Although I wouldn’t recommend talking to her about this anytime soon.” He spun his finger in a circle, indicating that this meant their time in Scout Hill. “And maybe my brothers aren’t the easiest to talk to, but there’s my sisters-in-law. We’re your family.”

“That’s nice of you to say,” Rosie said.

“There’s an amazing house right around the corner. It just got listed. In the pictures, the pool looks tiny, but it’s actually a decent size.” He gave her the address and told her to look it up.

“Wow,” Rosie said, feeling doomed. “That’s a big fence.”

“Exactly,” Jordan said. He went on to describe the house’s various perks, including the finished basement, which the previous owners had set up as a screening room, with several reclining seats and the kind of popcorn machine you’d find at a carnival.

Rosie stared straight ahead, the white lines on the highway flying by. If she blurred her vision, she could make them appear like one long line. She did not know who got her pregnant. It seemed unlikely that Dylan would ever seek her out, or contest parental rights. She pictured Dylan wearing a suit, in a stuffy family court, passing the Swimmrs receipt to a bailiff, who would hand it to a judge. She had no more adrenaline left inside her to spend on this thought. The bear had taken it all away. They were approaching a green exit sign for New York City. A feeling of nostalgia—or was it regret?—gripped Rosie like a fist. “Jordan,” she said suddenly, looking at the sign. “I’m sorry to ask this.” Her voice was pinched with panic. “Could we—could we just—” Jordan looked at the sign. He veered across two lanes of traffic, onto an exit ramp, a tight clover. He slammed on the brakes, and they came to an abrupt stop behind a line of cars backed up on the ramp, a wall of taillights.

“Jesus,” he said, turning on his hazards. Rosie looked out her window. Even in the dark, she could make out tiny yellow wildflowers shooting implausibly from the thin layer of snow on the shoulder, waving gently in the polluted, man-made wind. “It’s just—” she said, looking down at the listing of the Connecticut house on her phone. “I don’t think I can—maybe Brooklyn wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be—” She turned to Jordan. His face was blank. He took the GoldenDrop thermos from the cupholder and sucked from it. “You want to go back to Brooklyn,” he said.

Rosie nodded.

Jordan closed his eyes and fit the thermos back into the cupholder. Then he brought a palm to Rosie’s belly and kept it there for a long time. The car swayed slightly. “Is there a heartbeat?” he said finally.

“I don’t know. Not for a few more weeks, I think.”

He blinked a few times, his palm still against her. “OK. We’ll go back to Brooklyn. We’ll go back to where we started. But I get to choose where we live.”

“I’m sorry,” Rosie said, meaning it. “Of course.”

“I’m so tired,” Jordan said.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I’ll call Alice,” Rosie said. “She has a foldout couch. I’m sure she’d let us... for a little while...”

Jordan inched the car forward, a few feet at a time. The cars ahead of them had slowed. There was something on the side of the road. An accident, maybe.

Rosie rolled down her window an inch. The air smelled like exhaust and rubber. Jordan kept his hands on the wheel.

She didn’t see any accidents on the shoulder. A few cars ahead of her had their windows rolled down, phones sticking out. She stared out the window, until she finally spotted it: In the distance, a black bear the size of a pencil eraser moved along the wooded edge of the highway.

She rolled down the window farther and pulled her phone from her pocket. She zoomed all the way in, tracking the bear’s slow pace. She could barely see it against the dark sky. The animal in the photo was a blurry yet unmistakable black bear. She posted the video and captioned it with three bear emojis. Then she slipped her phone into her pocket and allowed the small vibration of each like and comment to arrive.