Dice had said I was a good girl, and I told myself to believe him, to give myself that gift of certainty. But tonight, nothing felt certain. I remembered lying on a couch all day in Isaac’s squat, the light of the glowing coils in the space heaters he had to use, because they couldn’t ask the landlord to turn on the heat. I remembered my mother bringing home gifts from her knickknack store, the “Solar Queen” plastic figurine, which wore a pink plastic skirt suit, with a little hand always elegantly waving as long as the sun shone. But I couldn’t remember feeling happy with Isaac, or happy with my mother, or interested, or excited. All the Durham memories were empty. I felt as though they had happened to someone else. Dice had said my hand would cast out the splinter if I let it. I wished my mind too could take these foreign objects and cast them out.

The next day started dim and remained that way, cloudy and dreadful to behold. I was going to take my love and spread it around, I was going to get to know everyone. At breakfast, I noticed the family seemed sparse. Pear didn’t appear, and neither did Dice, Rainer, and Gemini, our guardian.

Bay sat next to me at breakfast. “Let me make you something good,” he said. He spread cottage cheese and honey for me on Bip’s bread, which was falling apart, because Bip hadn’t had time to knead all twenty loaves fully—Pear wasn’t around to help him.

“Where is everyone?” I said.

“The men went out to find Queen,” Bay said.

I thought about Queen driving Pear’s car down through the black woods after the harvest festival. I imagined the dogs following the car, following her sweet spicy breath that reminded me of chai. I missed her. But I didn’t know whether I wanted her to come back.

“Did Pear go with them?” I asked Bay, as heavy crumbs plunked onto my plate.

“She went to the medicinal plant nursery on the family’s behalf.”

I set my tea down and looked at my hands. They didn’t look like hands that could throw a person to the floor. I couldn’t imagine how I had done it. Dice had been the lightning and I had been the rod. I knew what that meant now. I was the tool. I wasn’t to blame.

I pastured the sheep, mucked out the stable, then helped Sara string up runner beans to dry. We’d revitalize them in winter stews.

We sat in the kitchen, baskets of beans all around us. She kept inhaling as though to say something, but nothing came of it.