“Four,” I said.

“Right,” Helen said.

“Since when do you know how to build?” asked Karen.

“I half know how to build, so if you half know how to build, then that makes one whole carpenter,” Helen said.

“Half know how to build? What the hell does that mean?” Karen asked.

“You built this cabin, didn’t you?” Helen said.

“I’m half of nothing,” Karen said, and caught Perley’s waving hand. But then she smiled a little, or glared, depending on how you looked at it. Her wait-and-see smile. I could tell she was beginning to consider the thing.

We hadn’t known each other long when Karen said these two sentences in a row: You should know I’m bound to be alone. I want to provide for you. I’d laughed. How can both of those things be true? I’d asked. To find out, I began to sleep in her bed on the Land Trust so often that I lived there. I put up with her never-show-you-like-it, her wait-and-see, her storms. When she said, I want to have a baby with you, I’d answered, I want to have a baby with you. I couldn’t help but add, That’s the opposite of being alone, you know. She just gave me that smile again. In bed at night, Karen held her comic books up to Perley’s silly face, whispered, “We are a wolf pack.” To live with Karen was to watch the daily fight unfold. Stranger or provider. Loner or wolf pack. Wait and see.

Helen couldn’t take it. Into the silence, she said, “I figure we’ll eat mostly what we can grow or hunt. Or gather from the woods.”

“Sounds like you have it all figured out,” Karen said.

“I’ve been learning a lot about wild foods,” Helen said.

“Who from?” asked Karen.

“I’ve been reading,” Helen said.

“I might have known it,” Karen said.

“Karen’s into wild foods, too,” I said. “She’s always boiling down elderberries for medicine and drying nettles for soup and tea.”

“But I didn’t learn it in a book,” Karen said.

“I can do without that stuff,” I said. “Reminds me too much of lean times growing up.”

“You just have to know the right way to do it,” Helen said. “Mushrooms, huckleberries, hickory nuts, acorns. Especially acorns. It takes some work to process them, but that’s the way to get calories.”

“Have you done it?” asked Karen.

“I’ve calculated the amount we’d need to get all of us through next winter,” Helen said.

“Calculated,” Karen said.

“Did you know there’s seventy native trees in this bioregion?” Helen asked.

“More than that,” Karen said.