We went to the Amazing Savings and then Food Lion. We took clementines, limes, cans of tuna, pork chops, Grape-Nuts, peas, mayonnaise, maple syrup, ginger, turmeric, cranberry juice, and brownie mix. Soon I felt dreamy, anaesthetized. My whole body felt weightless, like that children’s game where, after you press your arms hard against the door frame, they float up of their own accord.

* * *

Bay acted like nothing had happened, until we were driving up the path through the woods, past the many BEWARE LARGE DOGS signs. “I won’t tell Dice about your little outburst,” he said.

Right now, back in Asheville, Isaac was just settling into a booth with hot cocoa and a heart-shaped cookie, turning around every time the door swung open to see if it was me. I wondered how long he’d wait before he gave up. Two hours, maybe. Then it was six hours back to Durham. I’d rejected him in Durham, and at the farm, and again now, it was done, it was final, I’d made myself clear. I would never see him again.

This was the outcome I was supposed to want. The less temptation to rejoin the fake world, the better. But it was easier to love the Ash Family as an act of defiance, an act of scorn against all who had hurt me—rather than to love the Ash Family as a last resort. I wished Rainer were here so I could ask him how he managed: he had known what it was like when no one else in the whole wide world cared if you lived or died.

spring and summer

CHAPTER 28

Lambing season was upon us, with the stresses of difficult births and bummer lambs, triplets, disinterested mothers, along with the beauty of those bat-eared babies hopping around the stables, leapfrogging onto their mothers’ backs. This year I got to choose a dozen of the girls to raise, so I could let myself love them. I should have been happy.

But the spring was sad. I replayed that moment in that car with Bay over and over. I wondered if I would ever feel at rest, in the real world or in the fake world. Bay ignored me when I sat near him or when I sat far, when I touched him or talked to him or loudly joked with Gemini next to him. I wondered if he felt he’d revealed too much to me. Maybe he felt I’d led him astray. He shouldn’t have confessed that my mother was alive. I reminded myself, “Get relativity.” Who was I to know whether something was good or bad? By what standards did we judge? The saddest moment might be the happiest moment. The thing and its opposite are kissing cousins. When you’re sure that you’re right, you’re most wrong.