I don’t want him to touch me like this—I don’t want the heat of him so close, reminding me of too many nights when we folded ourselves together beneath the sheets. I don’t want any of it. And yet, his lips are against my ear, muttering things I won’t recall by morning. His hands are in my hair, his words in my chest, and I feel myself sinking, slipping, and then my mouth is on his. This man I hate, this man I could press the life out of if my hands found his throat.
But instead, he whispers my name again, over and over, and his hand has found the hem of my dress. I hate him, and I press my lips against his mouth. I hate him, and I dissolve against his touch, the familiar pulse of his breathing, his heartbeat in my ears.
I hate him.
I hate him.
My back presses against the closed door and I pull him to me.
I hate him.
His lips are on my throat, my hands along his spine. Digging. Making trenches. Hating.
I forget that he doesn’t want me.
I forget that he is married, bound to another.
I forget—for the tiniest of seconds—that I hate him with everything I am. Hate hate hate.
And I let the hate become something else: a burning. A need, that is deep and silent and worries not about tomorrow or how this will feel in the morning.
I let myself love him one last time, against his bedroom door, against the soft cotton of his summer-white sheets. And for a moment, I think I can see the ceiling, the tiny blue floral pattern of the wallpaper. I think I see the window, looking out at the tall pines.
I think I see Levi’s face: the lines around his too-green eyes, the perfect structure of his nose and jaw, the form of his lips as they trace along my collarbone.
For the briefest moment, I can see again.
And it terrifies me.
CALLA
A lie is a lie is a lie.
It tastes the same when it leaves your throat, regardless of intent.
Living in Pastoral, you look for ways to keep some part of you hidden, some singularity from the group. But the lie I told my husband is different—I lied because I’m afraid, because the things scrabbling back and forth inside my mind frighten me. They make no sense, not in the way they should.
I told Theo I’ve never read the nursery rhyme inside the Foxtail book… but I have.
I’ve been reciting it every day, a melody that swings in and out of focus when I’m trying to sleep, trying to breathe. I’ve read it so many times, traced the letters with my fingertip, that now it feels as if it’s branded into my skin. It frightens me, the sureness of the words. So I keep them a secret, for now. I don’t tell Theo.
But my husband has lied too.
And so has Bee; there is a lie growing inside her—a tiny thing, but soon it’ll be too large to ignore.
I stand in our bedroom, holding the Foxtail book I pulled from the back of the closet, my fingers worrying over the edges of the cover, as if I could peel it apart, turn the book to scraps—shreds of paper falling to the floor. I watch through the window for my husband to return from Pastoral. He went to speak with Levi after the ceremony, and I walked home alone. But the longer he takes, the more certain I am that something’s happened.
When he finally appears in the far field, he’s moving quickly, head down.
I tuck the Foxtail book beneath my pillow and listen as Theo enters the house, then climbs the stairs two at a time, appearing in our bedroom doorway. “Is Bee back yet?” he asks quickly.
I shake my head.
“She was at Levi’s when I left.”
“Why was she there?”
He crosses the room and extends his hand out to me, ignoring the question. “I found this.”
I can’t tell what it is in the dark of the bedroom, but when he holds it up to the window, a silver chain unravels from his fingertips, shivering like water in moonlight. He places the chain in my palm, letting me hold it, letting me observe it closer. Letting me have it. As if it’s mine to keep. This isn’t like the notebook—which he’s never let me touch.
At the end of the chain are several charms. Tiny little books.
“There are four of them,” he says.
I touch each one with my fingertip, finding the numbers etched into the silver covers: one, two… four, five. The number three is missing.
My lungs blow out a quick breath, and I reach into my pocket, pulling out the tiny charm I found in the garden buried beneath the rosebush, and I place it beside the others. The clasp is broken, but I’m able to bend the soft metal and clamp the ring around the chain, placing it back with the others where it belongs. “Where did you find it?” I ask.