The men had finished reinforcing the storage house. They drove to town in the school bus and returned with boxes of bar soap. I wondered if it was Dumpstered; we didn’t buy fake-world soap. Instead, we washed with cow-fat soap from our cows, once they couldn’t give milk anymore.

Dice switched the May plaque for the June. Our crabapples and blue flag irises bloomed. The common wealth. The cabbages headed up. We planted hot wax peppers. We planted okra, and it kept growing.

The strawberries lolled on their vines, pulling their red out of the dark soil, somehow. The dino kale spread its frazzled leaves.

We harvested broccoli and radishes of all colors: purple, pink, red, white. We planted dill around the brassica beds to repel cabbage moths. In June we harvested all of the garlic. We planted legumes in the holes the garlic had vacated, to bring back the soil.

Bay soon left again to find new family. He left without saying goodbye.

* * *

A month and a half after Rainer’s arrival, after dinner, I found Queen out behind the dairy. We began to climb the hill together. Her eyes were rimmed red, opaline with tears. “Sit with me,” she said. I was pleased that, as I sought her out, she sought me. We sat on the rocks in the sloping meadow. The sun had set but the rocks were still warm. She said, “I have to tell you something.” I stared at her tattoo, the black longitudinal stripe from her chin down her throat to her sternum. “I’m late,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. Her head fell forward onto her chest. The grasses hissed and whooshed like the ocean. “Very late?” I said. She nodded.

“Does Rainer know?”

“Just you,” she said.

Everything lay on a simple spectrum of royal blue or darker, as though seen through blue glass. In the far woods, the stream was strangely bright. The evening star burned above Queen’s head.

“Would you keep it if they let you?”

“Yes,” Queen said. “But I can’t. We need to subtract from the world, not add to it. I understand why, the world’s no good. That’s why so many women here have neutered themselves.”

I hadn’t known that either. The idea struck fear into me. But then I reminded myself that the family was final, and the finality was what I liked about it. I had to be consistent.

“I need to tell Pear, but I don’t know what she’ll say. I don’t want to have my parts tied,” said Queen. “But I know I’ll be living here forever. What am I holding on to?”

She took my hand.

“I’ll help you,” I said.

Neither of us knew anything about forever. We were children.