When the sound came from the door, Lavender saw double: the stuttering form of Ansel’s silhouette. He held the baby like Lavender had taught him, one arm beneath the head. Blurred, he looked too young—pants-less and chicken-legged—to be holding an infant. Ansel and the baby were both crying, panicked, but when Lavender reached for them, her whole body smarted, a series of wounds she had not yet cataloged, her mouth a sandy pool of blood and grit.
“Ansel,” Lavender croaked. No sound came out. “Go.”
Time slowed.
“No,” she tried to scream. “Johnny, please—”
It was too quick. Too thoughtless. With one massive hand, Johnny yanked Ansel’s head back and slammed it with a crack against the wooden doorframe.
After, the silence.
It rang in Lavender’s ears, punctuated only by Johnny’s heavy, labored breaths. Even the baby had stopped crying, surprised. The room was incredibly still. Lavender watched from the floor, stunned, as the realization seemed to wash over Johnny. His giant body trembled with bewilderment as he backed out of the bedroom. They listened as he stormed down the stairs, slammed the back screen door. Ansel blinked slowly, dazed.
Lavender dragged herself across the hardwood. A slugging creak. When she reached her children, she gathered them in her arms and wept.
Johnny did not come back that night. Lavender huddled in the bed with the boys, vigilant and alert. She nursed the baby until he fell asleep—when Ansel withered hungry, Lavender shook her head in apology. Not enough milk. Ansel peered up at her with spindly wet lashes, the hollows around his eye sockets like those of a frightened little ghost.
*
At the first light of dawn, Lavender slid from the bed. The bruises across her legs and stomach were already purpling—both boys were asleep on the old mattress, breathing steadily. The wound on Ansel’s head had swollen, protruding to the size of a golf ball.
Lavender creaked open the window, stuck her face into the morning. The breeze was a gasp on her cheeks, the dewy air like a new kind of promise. Beyond, the fields were a morning yellow. Beyond, beyond. Beyond was a place Lavender could hardly remember. Beyond this room, beyond this house, there were mothers who cooked pot roast for their children. There were little boys who watched cartoons on Saturday mornings, innocent and unafraid. Buttered popcorn at the movie theater, boxed cereal, real toothpaste. There were televisions and newspapers and radios, schools and bars and coffee shops. Before she moved to the farmhouse, a man had landed on the moon—for all she knew, there could be a whole city up there by now.
Johnny stayed away until noon. Twigs in his hair. He’d slept in the forest. The look on his face made him so much smaller, like a completely different Johnny, slumped and ashamed. His entire body was a beg, curled desperate for forgiveness.
Lavender could not fathom forgiveness. But she would do this one thing—for the blue sunrise, that tantalizing beyond. For the world outside, which she was starting to fear her children would never see.
“Please,” Lavender said. She bared her teeth so Johnny could see the chip he’d left in her canine. “Take me for a drive.”
*
Lavender put on real clothes for the first time in months. She combed her hair, splashed water on her puffy cheeks, and tied a sweater around her waist, the soft wool knit she’d spent all winter making.
“Are we going to the barn?” Ansel asked, as Lavender slipped on her nicest shoes, penny loafers, untouched since her school days. Johnny was already waiting in the car. It had taken surprisingly little to convince him: a pointed gaze at the marks up her thighs, plus the reassurance that the boys would be fine for an hour or two. Lavender did not have a plan. But she could not see a way forward that was not also out.
“Daddy and I are going on a trip,” Lavender said. “We’ll be back soon.”
Ansel stretched his arms out from the floor, and she picked him up. He was getting too big to sit on her hip, but the weight was familiar, like she’d been carrying it a long time. The bump on his head bulged like a fist, and Lavender resisted the urge to touch it. She kissed the hair around it, then squatted over the baby. Wrapped in one of Johnny’s jackets by the fireplace, Baby Packer squirmed and babbled; they’d been playing with a set of old spoons, and his spastic palms were stained black from the polish. Lavender pressed her nose to the baby’s scalp, breathing in his sweet, tangy musk.
“Ansel,” Lavender said, pressing both her hands to his cheeks. “Can I trust you to take care of your brother?”