*
By the time Lavender slipped back into the valley, the sun had risen entirely, bathing the hills in a milky orange glow. Gentle Valley split open at her feet, lush and imposing. The vegetable gardens and fruit trees rose from the center field, lines of organized chaos. The women were awake: steam chugged from Sequoia’s chimney, and Lavender could hear their distant laughter, echoing over the clink of breakfast dishes.
After the redwoods, Lavender often felt small. Mortal, flimsy. It was always disappointing: the sun would rise, and again, the truth. No matter how far Lavender traveled, that girl from the farmhouse followed on her heels, a wispy shadow, starving for relief.
But today, she would have an answer: she was going to San Francisco. Today, she would find out what that girl had created.
*
Harmony sat with Lavender while she packed.
“It’s okay to feel anxious,” Harmony said. She was using the voice she saved for group sessions, a manufactured soft. When Harmony was drunk, she sounded like a completely different person, her voice blazing with the affectations of whatever world she’d left behind. A shrieking snort, a nasal laugh—so unlike this honeyed calm. After many political disputes within the hierarchies of the commune, Harmony had finally been elected workshop leader, and now she seemed desperate to prove herself.
“You’re sure you don’t mind driving?” Lavender asked, for the third time.
It was fruitless. Harmony was not backing out. The women had voted to set aside the van for Lavender’s trip, and Harmony had arranged an overnight with a friend in the Mission. It was a three-hour drive into the city, but in the past two decades, Lavender had only occasionally left Gentle Valley, accompanying Sunshine into Mendocino, where they stopped at the hardware store, the wholesale market, the bank.
Lavender tucked a pouch of balsam into her duffel. Harmony handed over a balled-up pair of socks, her expression transforming into a focused sort of sympathy.
Things had been different, since Lavender told the women. The truth had come out six months ago, in a group therapy session that went long into the night. Her whole story. She’d kept her secrets tucked tight for so many years, she had thought expulsion might feel like relief. But so far, the endeavor had only resulted in a recognizable ache, a pooling unease in the pit of Lavender’s gut, a tamping down of something poisonous. It lived inside her now, a writhing virus. When the idea for the trip came up, Lavender regretted telling them at all. She was grateful, of course, that the women were so supportive, that they’d put so much thought and effort into her healing, but gratitude did not make the anxiety any lighter. We want to help you find your center, Harmony had said, while everyone nodded from the circle on the floor. We cannot be whole until we face what has broken us. Even Juniper had gotten behind it, her weathered face crinkling as she nodded her approval. So Lavender had not protested when they hired the private investigator, sent those emails, RSVPed yes on her behalf. It’s time, Harmony had said. Time to face your demons.
Lavender wanted to tell them what she had learned about demons. Often, they were not demons at all—only the jagged parts of herself she’d hidden from the sun.
*
Lavender found Gentle Valley twenty-three years ago.
She had been on a bus, traveling up the coast. The sign had flashed, a vision from the side of the road—finger-painted words adorned with bright flowers, primitive and friendly. There was something distinctly feminine about the red and yellow cursive, something vital. Lavender stood, asked the bus driver to pull over.
She’d been in San Diego for two long years: 1977 to 1979. There had been motel rooms bathed in faded green light, camps beneath highways and men who smiled with rotting teeth, thumbs outstretched for rides across the desert. A brief stint at a club off the interstate, where Lavender strutted lazily across a raised platform in a gold bikini, swiping singles from truckers who told her she looked like Patty Hearst. On every curve of every freeway, she searched for Julie. Often she spotted Julie at a distance: a woman laughing in the window of a coffee shop, a tangle of long hair whizzing past in a pickup. She never did find her friend, but Lavender pushed forward those years on the road with a surprising sense of infallibility—the world felt bearable, knowing Julie had survived it first.
There were men. Men with tattoos, men with ponytails, men with dead eyes, just back from Vietnam. And to Lavender’s surprise, there were women, too. Another dancer at the club, her fingers like honey as they slipped beneath Lavender’s skirt. She’d spent a few intoxicating months with that woman, an art student who danced to support her sick mother, loved Led Zeppelin, and kept an apartment full of potted plants. So what’s your deal, exactly? she had asked one morning in bed, thumb roving Lavender’s bare hip. Lavender knew she was waiting for an answer: lesbian, bisexual, maybe neither, maybe both. But she’d only shrugged. Most days she barely felt like a person.