“Actually, the uterus always cramps after orgasm,” Karen said. “It’s just that when you’re not pregnant, you can’t usually feel it.” She thought one more minute. She lit another cigarette, got back to her piece of white oak.

“I guess I’m carving another baby spoon,” she said. “I guess we’ll have to make the house bigger.”

18

KAREN

I wasn’t afraid of the flames. I wasn’t afraid afterward, as I emptied my zombie apocalypse kit into the river. Through it all, I felt a cold and bitter joy. I wasn’t afraid until I made it home, came down the path, and saw Lily. Her black hair, her sharp chin, her open eyes, it wasn’t just Lily I was looking at, it was Perley, too. I saw everything I’d set out to protect, and everything I’d risked. Then fear rose in front of me like a wall and knocked me back. Seeing Lily made me remember things, how chatty the tanker truck driver had been, how Shane would have found by now that I’d cut out. What other loose ends wasn’t I thinking of? How long would it take for them to find me? What would they do? I had no way of knowing, and those were the wrong questions anyway. Helen was wrong when she talked like any of us knew what created lasting change. Those words came straight out of a can, it wasn’t even her own voice saying them. I’d whittled down past all that. I didn’t know if I was right or wrong, wily or a fuckup. All I knew was that after days and months of grim confusion, I’d arrived at the compressor station in Muskingum County with a certainty that I hardly recognized as mine. Against that, what was fear? I did my best to push it aside.

I wasn’t planning on talking to Lily about any of that. My plan, which I’d come up with on the final hitch home, when I’d kept my mouth shut and pretended to sleep against the window, was simple. To tell Lily I hadn’t saved enough money. To tell her I was sorry I left. To beg forgiveness. Not to say Sorry but, or Sorry and. Just to say sorry.

But she wasn’t interested.

First of all, she wanted me.

She invited me to bed, which was itself a surprise, more so even than the house, clean as I’d never seen it. She’d even built a small bed just for Perley, partitioned off in the corner. I hardly recognized the place.