The woman shook her head. I strained to listen.

“She found another woman there.”

The woman turned and caught my eye. I didn’t feel bad for Roger. I knew that soon he would see Lindsay as I saw Isaac—he never understood me, he didn’t believe I knew where I was headed, so I had rightly left him behind; now I knew my life had been building toward the family and toward Dice, the vivid, the essential. Lindsay was someone he needed to let go. The more he could cut away, the better.

I found Queen in the dairy. I needed to tell her about my conversation with Lindsay. I needed Queen to say that it would be all right, that Lindsay would mind her own business, that she wouldn’t rat me out to Isaac, that he wouldn’t tell my mother, and that even if he did, there would be no way for her to find me.

She was wiping down the cheese board, pushing the whey from the press into the bucket on the floor. Later this would go to the pigs.

“Roger was with someone in the hayloft,” I said. “A woman, I mean.” Queen shook the last of the whey into the bucket. I didn’t care about the hayloft. It was my opening move, so I could shift into the heart of the matter, which was Lindsay. “Lindsay left, you know,” I said. “I guess it makes sense now.”

Queen gathered up a few empty baskets and tossed them roughly in the sink. I wanted to tell her to be careful. “People shouldn’t be discussing things like that.” She turned both taps on as far as they would go, and the water thundered.

I wanted Queen to suggest we find a way to stop Lindsay on her way back to Durham. She usually liked to talk, to speculate and scheme. “You’re wasting the hot water,” I said, closing the taps.

She ignored me. Instead, she shifted the baskets around as though they weren’t yet clean.

“Come on,” I said, pushing her toward intimacy. “You have to admit that it was brazen of him to hook up with someone on his second night.” I took a mop to help her with the floor, which was covered in bits of cheese and salt and manure tracked in from the barn. “Like Dice says, utopias often break down because of love problems.”

“Please,” Queen said, turning to me, and her eyes shone. “Like you follow that rule. I know you want Bay.” Her words hit like a slap. “It wasn’t just someone,” Queen continued. “It was me. Dice made me.” I stood there stunned as she knelt and swept up the curds and leaves and straw from the floor with her hands.