“The end,” I said. “Your turn. But only if you want to.”
He looked across the field, out past the bluffs. “Once upon a time there was a boy and he was scared,” he said, talking fast. “He was scared because his mother turned into a monster. And he wanted to tell his dad about it, but his dad was a monster, too. So he hid for a long time. It was dark. No one found him and he fell asleep.”
Oh, Lee. I placed my hand on his back, between his shoulder blades. I would have carried all his pain for him if I could.
“How does it end?” I asked him.
“One day some people found him, with flashlights and badges, and they took him from one place to another place, until he ended up here. I mean, until he ended up in a pretty white house with a lot of nice people. And none of them were monsters. And he lived happily ever after. The end.”
My eyes stung but I blinked the tears back, glad he wasn’t looking.
“Did I do it right?” he asked.
“Yes,” I told him. “Yes. You did it right.” I knew it was fast—we had known each other only for a very short time—but love for him swelled in my chest. I thought I could save us both. So I said, “Lee, I’ve been thinking. Maybe . . . when you feel the way you do sometimes. When you get scared in your chest and your stomach, you could try to invite what scares you in. Pay attention to it. Let it play back in your memory. I’m only now understanding it myself, but I think we have to face the things that scare us in order to move on from them. It might be the only way to stop being afraid.”
He turned to his side to look at me.
“Do you understand?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think so.”
And then Julia was crossing the field toward us, on her way to announce the end of school. She hovered above—employer, adoptive mother, giver of our happy endings—white haired and beaming.
“School time is over.” She rang the bell and the three of us laughed.
“Want to go in for a snack?” Lee asked me.
“You go ahead,” I told him. “I’m going to work in the schoolhouse. I’ll see you in a little while.”
Back in the schoolhouse, I thought of what I might do to hold Lee’s attention the next week. We couldn’t spend every day racing and telling fairy tales. We could try our math lesson standing up, away from the small desk. We could make a game out of it, with movements and prizes. I planned it all out. And then I spent some time with the shelf of novels, reading chapters from a few of them, deciding which one we should read next.
* * *
___
When I was finished, I closed up the schoolhouse and headed to my room.
I was nearing Liz’s cabin when I heard something. I thought it might be a cat at first, or another kind of animal. I waited quietly, and then there came a deeper sound, and I realized what it was. Billy and Liz were in there, together, the curtain closed, the door shut. I heard her moan. Not a cat at all.
I took a step closer, as quietly as I could. I didn’t mean to listen—not really—but I also didn’t want them to hear me there on the path and know I had heard them. I was so close, only a foot away, and the cabins were so old and simple that I could hear the bedsprings groan up and down. I couldn’t help myself—I imagined their position, imagined him moving inside her, imagined her hips and breasts and the looks on their faces. My knees went weak. They were louder now—I could hear them breathing hard, the springs moving faster, so I hurried toward my own room.
I took off my shoes at the door and climbed into my bed, suddenly hollowed out. I had known that first morning heading to the shower that they might have been together. Every night, when they walked into one cabin or another, they weren’t hiding anything. But still—I hadn’t known for sure that it was something more than friendship, and knowing for certain now left me feeling foolish.
And yet, I couldn’t get the sounds out of my head, nor the vision of them I’d created. I didn’t want to get them out.
Was it wrong to think of Billy and Liz this way? Was it wrong to imagine them as I slid down my jeans, as I made myself moan the way they’d made each other?
I turned my head to the pillow, not wanting to be heard. Outside, it was daylight still, and Billy and Liz were naked in her cabin, and Julia was tending to her flowers, and Terry was most likely warming the oven for dinner. Maybe the little ones were playing ring-around-the-rosy. Maybe a flock of birds flew overhead. Maybe the ghosts were waking up. But I was alone in my tiny cabin. Alone in the rise and the shudder.
Alone in the quiet after.
* * *
___
That evening, I paused just outside the door of the main house. In the soft pink light, the field glowed a deep green. Rays of sunlight shone through clouds. I heard voices inside, lively and relaxed with the start of the weekend.
As soon as I entered, Billy touched my arm. “Mila, hey. I want to teach you to make butter. Interested?”
“Yes,” I said.
“After, we can slice the loaves together. I’ll show you all my tricks,” Liz said, an uncommon ease about her. She leaned a hip against the cabinet and smiled.
“Sounds good,” I answered.
“First,” Billy said, “grab the bottle of cream from the refrigerator.”
I did as he told me to, grateful for the blast of cold on my face. When I turned back, Liz was watching me.
“Something’s up,” she said.
“No,” I said. “Just . . . I spent a while lesson planning. Then I took a nap. I’m just a little out of it, I guess.”
“Hmm,” she said.
We were only three people, standing in the kitchen, I told myself. It didn’t need to be complicated.
To Billy, I said, “What’s next?”
“You pour it into a mason jar, make sure the lid’s on tight. And then you shake. Forever.”
I laughed. “It sounds like you just want me to do the work.” And they both laughed along with me.
Liz hopped up onto the counter, her bare feet dangling. “She’s figured you out, Billy.”
“No, but it’s so satisfying. It starts out liquid and turns into butter. It’s a miracle.” His words were hyperbolic, but I could tell that he meant them. Liz rolled her eyes.
I shook the bottle until my arm got sore, then I switched hands and shook again. After a few minutes Liz offered to take a turn. I handed her the jar and noticed the gold chain around her wrist again, delicate but substantial.
“Your bracelet’s so pretty.”