She scrolls. Another one of … a ceiling? And a shape that looks like a limb on the right side of the screen.

The carpet, she realizes. That’s why my back hurts. The pain in her back is like a rash.

Above both images:

Today 12:31 AM

She puts her phone down and lies still, facing the wall. Ava enters the room and gets into bed as Gemma lies there with her eyes open in the night.

Gemma wakes to full daylight and the sound of Ava in the shower.

A weightlessness floats up from her ribs, rising through her, a vessel of resigned shame: All right, then. Did you fuck it up? You fucked it up. It’s ruined! Hope you’re happy! What’d you do? Does it even matter?

Almost instantly, this is followed by a second weightlessness, jumpy and cloying, breathing through her windpipe with not shame but fear: Why was Ava like that last night? She seemed … mean. And she was acting weird yesterday morning, too. Shit, what did she do last night that you can’t remember?! Is this place actually safe—

Stop, thinks Gemma. Stop. None of these questions are helpful. But they stay, drifting and settling around her like poison gas.

An actual hangover for the ages is kicking in, too, though that is not the biggest item on her problem list.

She checks the time; Ava’s going to work soon. Get up. She lifts her head. Okay. Move. She gulps six T1s and changes back into her red dress and puts all her shit in her bag. She puts up her hair and brushes her teeth and shaves over the kitchen sink and sips carefully at a glass of water. Coffee? None has been made. (People who didn’t drink coffee first thing in the morning … Why even have a machine on the counter? To Gemma this made as much sense as keeping shampoo in the back of the closet.) She’s still sweating from the broken A/C, but she gets a pot going. She does her makeup in the living room mirror.

Soon, Gemma’s on the couch with her bag by her feet, sipping from the ultramarine mug. She hears the bathroom door open. Gemma freezes at first, staring at the blank shade. She hears Ava’s footsteps. But before she can turn to face her, she hears Ava’s bedroom door close.

Gemma stands and raises a window shade and looks at the morning landscape.

She can wait.

This was the last town Mennonites really got claws into, this far into the province. Even here, they didn’t dominate; they were only, like … half the population, she’d guess? Not like Winkler or anything. Sure, immediately west was a Hutterite colony, some Holdeman outposts. A church in Manitou here, one south of Crystal City there. But this town, that’s mostly where they’d stopped.

Olive comes out of her room and waves to Gemma, her demeanour pleasant. She knocks on Ava’s door, and then enters without a sound. Gemma looks at the red curtain of beads by the entryway.