I hesitated. Would she understand if I told her what Amir and I had been doing for years? How we’d entered people’s homes, wandered around, let our imaginations run, and then left without taking anything more than a nibble of something to eat? We did not cause anyone harm. We were like spirits, I thought, seeing but never seen.
Rosalie would not understand. How could she? I did not think that you could be very curious about other people’s lives when your own life was perfect.
“Yes,” I said. “I wanted to peek inside. We would never have tried if we’d realized someone was home. We didn’t want to upset anyone. It’s just something we do for fun. Something weusedto do for fun. I don’t think we’ll be doing it anymore.” I gestured toward my leg.
Rosalie put her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry that Tiger attacked you. That must have been very scary.”
I felt a wave of guilt. Again, she was being kinder to me than I deserved. “Oh, I’ll survive.” I adjusted my arm below hers so that she pulled her hand away. “Anyway, how mad can I be? I only wanted to peek inside, and look what I got instead. A vacation at a luxurious resort, complete with Dutch Crunch, chocolate croissants, and a fireside picnic.”
Rosalie laughed.
A breeze traveled up the lawn toward us and I caught, at last, a hint of brine in the air. When I looked over at Rosalie, I realized that she had closed her eyes and seemed to be breathing the air in deeply, a smile lingering on her face. When she opened her eyes and looked at me, her eyes shone with emotion.
“Do you ever feel aware of being within one of the moments of your life when everything changes?” she asked. “As though you can feel the shift happening?”
I was astonished. It was just how I had felt in a few key moments of my life. I thought of my fifth birthday, when Bear had pinned me down in the woods. I thought of holding Amir’s hand on his first night at Horseshoe Cliff. I thought of standing in the bathroom the day before, hardly recognizing myself in the mirror.
“Yes,” I said. “I know just what you mean.”
Rosalie nodded as though she’d known this was how I would answer. “I didn’t always have a happy family,” she said. “My father did things to me that no father should do to his daughter, that no adult should do to a child. My mother pretended thesethings did not happen. She chose him over me. I have not spoken to either of them in thirty-seven years.”
I listened, startled, with no idea how to respond.
“When I was your age, I could never have guessed how my life would turn out,” she continued in a clear, steady voice. “That I would marry a kind man—Will’s father—who would die at too young an age. That as a widow I would fall in love again and marry a wonderful, equally kind man and that we would have a daughter, completing our family. There were years when I could not imagine the turns my journey would take. There were times in my life that I didn’t believe in myself and I couldn’t see a way forward. I was lucky in those moments to have other people step in and do the believing for me.
“You see, I carry my past with me, but it no longer defines me. This”—she waved her hand toward the house—“is me: the love that I feel for my husband and children. It turns out that the past can fit into a very small box.”
She pressed her lips together, thinking. Then she leaned toward me and said quickly, “Merrow, whatever you think is keeping you here in Osha isn’t. You can be whoever you wish to be. You have your GED, and I could—”
The door to the patio was thrown open. “Mom!” came Emma’s high, happy voice. “Dad’s home!”
Rosalie offered me an apologetic smile. “Well, more on this later,” she said, standing. “Let’s go tell Wayne that you showed up on our doorstep, claiming to be his daughter from some long-forgotten tryst.”
I stared at her. “What? No!”
She laughed. “The look on your face! I’m only kidding.” She offered her hand, and, without hesitation, I took it. “Stay for dinner,” she said. “Monopoly with Emma will last at least that long.”
I nodded, leaning on her as I limped inside, feeling confused and exhilarated. No one had ever spoken to me as Rosalie had—and yet, what exactly had she been trying to tell me? Her words were a gift that I could hold but not yet unwrap.
AFTER DINNER WITHRosalie, Will, Emma, and Wayne Langford—a cheerful man bursting with self-deprecating stories of his attempts at salmon fishing—Rosalie offered to drive me home. She gave me a cotton grocery bag to pack my things in, telling me to keep all the clothes she had given to me over my stay, including the white pajamas I’d worn to bed and the rubber boots I’d been wearing all day. When I returned from gathering together my old and new clothes, I felt a thrill to see Will standing in the hall beside his mother.
“All packed?” he asked, taking my bag from me. “I’ll drive you home.”
“Apparently I’m a terrible night driver,” Rosalie said. “Which was news to me.” There was an edge to her voice that I did not understand.
I waited for her to say more, to continue her line of thought from earlier in the day, but Emma and Wayne appeared from the kitchen to wish me goodbye, and then Rosalie put her hands on my elbows and kissed my cheek and told me that she would not forget me. I looked around the grand hallway, sure that I would never see the house again.
In the car, I gave Will directions to Horseshoe Cliff. Once I spoke, I could not seem to stop. When we passed a field of grazing horses, I told him the story of how Bear had sold our horses without my permission, and when we passed Little Earth I told him how Teacher Julie had given me the first notebook I’d ever owned and encouraged me to write down my stories. Will kept his eyes on the darkening road the entire time. It was only as we neared Horseshoe Cliff that I grew quiet. Will had not said more than a few words during the drive. I felt a flood of embarrassment for how long I had rambled without any encouragement from him, for how silly my stories must have seemed to someone like him, for what he would think when he saw where and how I lived. I wished I had kept my mouth shut. I wished I had left him with the memory of me dressed in a fancy sweater and boots, with my hair brushed, my face set in a thoughtful, intelligent, mature expression as I gazed at the passing countryside.
Will slowed the car to a crawl as he maneuvered it over the bumps and ruts of our long dirt driveway. I watched him from the corner of my eye, but he hid his thoughts well and I was grateful for it. I wasn’t sure I could have taken it if he had flinched at the sight of our rotting clapboard and broken kitchen window.
The car headlights moved over the porch as we pulled up to the house. Bear sat on my father’s old chair. He took a long swig from a can of beer, squinting, but otherwise he didn’t move. I could not see Amir, but I knew that he would not be anywhere near Bear.
Will stopped the car and turned off its lights. He lifted his hand in a wave and nodded in Bear’s direction. Bear took another swig of his beer.
“That’s Bear’s version of a greeting,” I said. “It’s efficient—he says hello and quenches his thirst at the same time.”
Will didn’t smile. He turned off the car’s engine.
