*
When Harmony rolled up in the van, Lavender spoke with a palpable heaviness: Take me home. Harmony did not ask questions, didn’t even argue to spend the night like they’d planned. As they sat in traffic at the foot of the bridge, the silence of the van’s interior felt accusatory. The city beat like a drum out the window, and Lavender had the miserable thought that if she passed her children on the sidewalk, she would not recognize either of them. She wondered about Ansel, now twenty-nine years old—if he was married, if he loved his work, if he had any children. If there was a world in which he needed her, still.
For the first time, Lavender let herself question. What if she had gone back. What if she had traveled north, instead of three thousand miles west, if she had scooped those boys from the hardwood floor and held them tight, promised never to let them go. Would Blue still exist? Would Lavender? How would the universe look now, if she had saved her children instead of herself?
*
Dear Ansel.
I hope that you can smell the trees. They talk, did you know? If you ever feel lost, just whisper to the bark.
Dear Ansel.
I hope the world has been good to you. I hope you have been good to it.
Dear Ansel.
My love. My heart. My little boy.
I—
*
Home. The smell of leaves, trampled into the ground. Damp oak, the smoky char of Sequoia’s cooking stove. When Lavender creaked open the door to her room, her patterned quilt sat folded on the edge of the bed, gentle and welcoming, just how she’d left it.
The next morning, the women recited a poem. Juniper herself had requested printed copies of Lavender’s favorite Mary Oliver and placed a sheet on each clean breakfast plate. Harmony was sheepish—when she laid a hand on Lavender’s shoulder to excuse her from dish duty, Harmony’s fingers trembled like she knew she’d made a mistake. It wasn’t Harmony’s fault; Lavender could only blame her for the idea. Lavender herself had stepped into that gallery.
After dinner, she and Sunshine took a walk around the valley. They sank into the evening glimmer, the vague insect clatter, the sleepy rustle of birds in their nests. When the campfires had been extinguished, when the lights flickered one by one and Gentle Valley was blanketed in sleep, Sunshine followed Lavender back to her bedroom. They left the lights off, clamored fully clothed beneath Lavender’s sheets. Lavender shook with the grief of it all, as Sunshine wrapped herself tenderly around, the shape of her body a reassurance against Lavender’s heaving spine. In another life, maybe, Lavender would have turned to face Sunshine, would have let her tongue ask about its own wanting. But this was Lavender’s life, and Sunshine was simply a good friend who knew what she needed—a swaddle, a rocking, the sweet lullaby of skin.
When Sunshine fell asleep, Lavender stood in the generous dark. She pulled the chair from the desk beneath her window, settled her aching hips into the frame. In the moonlight, the blank sheet of paper was luminescent. The pen in her hand a glistening dagger.
Dear Ansel, she thought, as she pressed the ink to the sheet. A missive she would write but knew she’d never send, another addition to a universe of what-ifs.
Dear Ansel. Tell me. Show me. Let me see what you’ve become.
4 Hours
Bend, the officer says. Pants off.
The new prison smells different. Like the paste that holds old bricks together, like wet concrete and steam, which rises from the building next door—the factory, where the low-security prisoners make lumpy mattresses for college dorms.
Pants off, the officer repeats.
The sheet of notebook paper is still folded against your hip, a sharp edge pressed into elastic. Blue’s letter. As you fiddle with your waistband, you try to tuck the paper into your palm, but a corner of white flutters inevitably into sight. The officers move fast: in a matter of seconds, your cheek is pressed to the dusty floor, wind pummeled from your chest, pants tangled around your feet. The officers cackle as they unfold the note, taunting.
What do we have here?
Dear Ansel, one of them begins to read aloud in a high, false woman’s voice. My answer is yes. I’ll be there, to witness. I don’t want to—
You struggle to stand, pain flooding your ribs as you wriggle obediently out of your underwear. Your penis curls into its nest of hair, small and soft and unprotected. One officer checks your rectum while the other hovers, mocking. He reads Blue’s words in a nasally mimic:
I don’t want to see you, and I don’t want to talk—
Stop. Please.
The officer gestures like maybe he’ll give the paper back—squatting naked, you reach. The officer grins, holding the page by one delicate corner. Slowly, he rips it in half. He rips again, then again, until the long white strips break down into confetti. Something internal shreds along with the words, but you stay crouched until your knees quake. Blue’s handwriting drifts to the floor. Graceful, like falling snow.