“Cracked, I guess?”
Drew stood up, removed her ball cap, and rubbed her forehead.“I mean, I guess I can work around these trees, put up the posts again…” She stepped back and eyeballed the center of the fence.“Open it up right here, gate swings open”—she pantomimed the motion—“just enough space, I think.”
“Perfect,” Corinthia said.
Drew began measuring and taking notes.“You wanna tell me what you’ve actually been up to?”
“What do you mean?”
Drew thumped a skinny tree trunk with her hand.“They don’t sell these things at a nursery, and they sure don’t grow overnight.”
Corinthia hesitated.It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Drew; it was that explaining personal things was difficult, and she had a tendency to freeze up.
“You know what?”said Drew, with a mischievous expression, “I’ll ask Stevie.Give her enough food and she’ll tell me anything.”
“I will not,” Stevie said.“Wait—what kind of food are we talking about, here?”
“Good to know you would sell me out for a hot dog,” Corinthia said.“I’ll tell you,” she added, to Drew, “but you have to promise not to tell anyone else.”
“I swear on my mother,” Drew said.
“Your mother is alive and well and living in Poughkeepsie,” Corinthia pointed out.
“That’s even better, isn’t it?”
It probably was, so Corinthia filled her in.
“So you’re splitting your time between your two places,” Drew said, when Corinthia finished.
“Why is everyone more interested in my living arrangements than the unbelievable transformation of my backyard?”
“Did you formally ask this woman out yet?”Drew said.“I mean, you’re sleeping at her place, she’s sleeping at yours, you eat breakfast together, shouldn’t you maybe make it official?”
“That’s what I said,” Stevie chimed in.
“I haven’t figured out how to bring it up yet,” Corinthia admitted.
Drew looked like she might laugh, but then she quickly became serious, even earnest.“Look, Corinthia.My friend.All you have to do is say, ‘Hey, mama, how’s about we make it official?’And then she says yes, and you give her a big smackeroo.You get what I’m saying?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing,” Corinthia said.“She’s from…over there.”Corinthia gestured toward the Refuge.“I’m fromover here.”
“So what?”
“She thinks she’s abird.”
“Again, so what?”
So what, indeed.Corinthia didn’t actually care whether or not Rosemary was a bird; she only had the lingering suspicion that she wassupposedto care, that a normal personwouldcare, but Corinthia was beginning to suspect that she herself might be slightly different.
“She reads books like you?”Drew continued.
“Yes…”
“She seems to know what she wants?”
