My hands are still clutching fistfuls of mud. Genny wraps her driftwood fingers around my wrists and squeezes until I release the grains into the churning water.

“But you must go elsewhere, too. This pond is mine. This is where the mothers know to bring my gifts. Find a bog, find a river, find a sea—find your family.”

Genny tucks a strand of algae behind my ear and turns away. I watch her vanish into the dark water—the closest thing to a mother I’ve ever known. Closer than the woman who wrapped me up and drowned me. Closer than the moment where Kyle’s mother held me and wept against my neck.

The water no longer feels cold. It feels empty. The currents echo.

I pull my linen strip tight around my throat and push myself forward through the water.

There’s a river in the woods. There’s an old mill there. A tree that drips vines over the gurgling water. The stepping stones are slick. When it rains, the water roars.

They say not all Gennies grab, and mine never did. But some have to. Sometimes, it’s the only way.

Not all children are gifts.

Intersect

INTERSECT

When I’m lying awake, I like to think about how, in a parallel universe, my daughter lives. That there she has chestnut hair, forget-me-not eyes, and lips like a snapdragon. How—there—we laugh and raid the raspberry patch, stain those lips red. At three in the morning, when the wine wears off, I think of how those lips will part when I squeeze her cheeks. Somewhere out there, it’s happening, I like to think.

But not here. In this universe—the one I’m too scared to leave despite all it has done to me—in this one I left her at the bottom of a toilet bowl.

I suppose somewhere out there, if what they say is true, she has chestnut eyes and forget-me-not hair. Here, we’ll never know.

When I give up on sleep, I get up, pee on a test stick and leave it, like always, on the cistern for Jason to read, and I go out to water the garden.

In a parallel universe, Jason gets up an hour later and reads the test—maybe runs outside to show me. Or maybe just drops it in the trash, buries it, saying nothing.

In a thousand parallel universes, if what they say is true, Jason probably stayed.

Here, though, in this one, I have the garden. There is that. Somewhere out there, I’m probably clutching my blue-haired daughter as we weep over wilted irises. Here, my hands cup blooms so big they drag their stems to the ground.

Somewhere I have it all.

The garden takes till noon, and I suppose somewhere I’m layering a sandwich for a hungry mouth at the table, swinging her feet and smacking her petal lips.