“Thanks. Terry and Julia gave it to me.” She didn’t meet my eye when she said it, and then she was shaking the cream, fast.
“Be sure to give it to Mila before it’s too late,” Billy said. She did, and I experienced the moment he had described: One second I was shaking a liquid and the next it thumped in the jar.
“Open it up,” he told me. “See the wet stuff? That’s buttermilk.”
“So cool.”
“And now we take out the butter and strain it through a cheesecloth—to get the rest of the buttermilk out. After that comes my favorite part: stirring in the salt. So much salt. Way more than you think you need.”
How simple, I thought. How easy, all of it. Being there with them. Learning the simple tricks of slicing the loaves—a sharp serrated knife; a firm hold; a sawing motion, back and forth rather than downward. Watching Billy scoop spoonfuls of gray sea salt and stir them into the butter.
“Hey,” I said as he closed up the box of salt. “Your bracelet . . . it’s the same as Liz’s.”
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah.”
“Terry and Julia?” I asked.
“Terry and Julia,” he said. He glanced at Liz. They both looked sad and I didn’t know why.
Liz reached for the bell that hung in the kitchen and rang it. Everyone came pouring in and took places around the table. Terry opened the oven door to take out the frittatas he’d cooked: egg and potato for the picky eaters, herb and goat cheese and mushroom for the rest of us. I slid onto a bench beside Lee.
Little Blanca climbed up next to me.
“Hi, there,” I said to her.
“I want bread.”
“Bread coming up.” I set a slice onto her plate.
She reached her arms out for the butter, and I was relieved to see her wrists were bare, that not everyone had these gifts but me. I spread the fresh butter on her slice, but as I looked at her happy face, I caught a flash of a gold necklace below it.
“Thank you,” she said with her mouth full.
“Sure.”
Across from me, Hunter dished himself a serving of salad with a gold-braceleted hand. Emma wore stacks of bangles on her wrists. Her neck was bare. But when she moved to tuck her hair behind her ear, I saw a gold band on her right hand—thin, simple—and I knew. Jackson’s necklace was tucked into their shirt, but I could see a hint of it. A necklace for Darius. A bracelet for James. On Mackenzie, a ring just like Emma’s.
Finally, I let my gaze shift to Lee. Not him, too, I hoped. And no—not him. I knew him well enough already, the slenderness of his wrists, the curve of his neck, the bareness of his fingers. So, it was Lee and me, then. The only two not yet officially one of them. I didn’t know what to make of it. Lee had been here for a long time.
“Goat cheese and herb?” Terry asked from over my shoulder. I nodded yes.
“And you, young man?”
“I’ll try that one, too. Since Mila’s having it,” Lee said.
I was grateful for Lee by my side. Now that I knew about the chains and rings, I felt the nakedness of my wrists and neck and fingers. Even though I told myself I was fine, that I had only been there for a few weeks, I was still ashamed. I found myself placing my hands in my lap whenever I wasn’t using my fork and knife. I let my hair fall over my neck to hide its bareness.
“Mila made the butter tonight,” Liz said.
“You did!” Julia said. “It’s delicious.”
I nodded, but wanted their eyes off me, however friendly their expressions, however innocuous their attention. All I could think was, Look at Mila. The one who knows nothing. The one who isn’t one of us. I felt my hand take hold of Lee’s under the table. He smiled at me and squeezed mine back. At least I had him. At least there were two of us.
* * *
___
Later, after we’d cleared the dishes and the high schoolers had taken their stations to wash and dry, I found Lee in the living room, looking out the dark window.
“What’s up, buddy?” I asked him.
“It’s my ghost. He’s making mean faces.”
As soon as I looked toward the window, the ghost turned and darted away. It was much smaller than Lee was. If it were human, it could not have been more than five years old.
“Lee, what do you mean, your ghost?”
He turned to me, as though surprised. As though he hadn’t realized he was speaking to me at all. “Oh,” he said. “It just . . . follows me. I think it likes me.”
I rumpled his hair. “Well, I don’t blame it. Who wouldn’t like you?”
He tried to smile, but he was blinking tears away, turning his face so that I couldn’t see it.
“Can I read you a story?” I offered, but he shook his head.
“I think I’ll just go to sleep.”
“Okay.”
He gave me a quick hug and climbed the stairs.
* * *
____________
A few days later, Lee and I were alone in the schoolhouse. Billy had the little ones out on a nature walk and, because Terry and Julia were away meeting Ruby and Diamond—the twins who would soon be coming to live with us—the high schoolers had persuaded Liz to hold class in the living room.
We’d finished math and reading and now it was time for art. Together, we were learning about one-point perspective from a book.
Next to each other at the big table, with large sheets of paper and chalk pastels, Lee drew a room with ceilings and walls and a floor. Every line was careful. And I was being careful, too. I’d been thinking of our fairy tales in the field, about the ghost in the window, about the way he withdrew when he was afraid. I had a plan to help him, and it required me to be brave.
So I drew a street, flanked by sidewalks, growing narrow in the distance. I felt a tremble in my hand and paused to read aloud from the book about depth and scale.
And then I said, “Let’s keep drawing. Fill up your room.”
Lee added a table and chairs and light fixtures. Books and plants and people. And I added my own details. Telephone wires with birds perched atop them. A window, through which a father and son worked a puzzle.
I was drawing the view from the skeleton house.
My hand trembled—I couldn’t stop it this time—and the pastel slipped from my fingers. I feared the remembering would swallow me whole. But Lee pushed out from the table, dipped low and resurfaced with my pastel. I took it from his hand as he scooted back in.