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Couple and CongregationIt was the perfect day for a wedding, and so they had one. The cherry blossoms were big, pleasingly plump over grass so thick, the bride and groom had kicked off their shoes. Clouds glowed in the distance. The air was warm with sunshine. Their bare feet touched at the edge of her dress, the edge of his tuxedo’s pant leg. They stood in front of the groom’s twin sister, almost mirrors of each other. In a private park in Washington DC. she conducted the ceremony. Her pant suit was dark and formal with a tight white shirt buttoned with one glossy green button. The groom wore cufflinks, for the first time in his life. The links looked like tiny computer keyboards. He had watched videos online again and again until he could tie his bowtie perfectly. The bride was happy, smiling, looking only at her husband to be. She looked glad. The dress looked like it had been made for her, long and white and laced. She had shopped alone, arriving at the best stores having carefully researched their stock. She arrived and asked for dresses by item number.The guests were beautiful, powerful, and famous. Hundreds of them, surrounded and permeated by caterers, who themselves were surrounded and permeated by security personal, private and public.It was that kind of wedding. They had each written their own vows, shared with his sister and then ratified by her here. The promise he had written was funny, but sweet, with popular culture references. Star Wars and Harry Potter. The final version of it had appeared online hours before the wedding. Her promise was specific, but heartfelt. Exacting. It mentioned codes, statues without flinching. They had each memorized their entire, not short, promises. They both recited them smoothly, calmly, with a surety that could only be born of long experience. Not only with each other, but with all the good and bad the world had to offer. They were on the older side of young. Their world was happy for them, they were happy for each other and for themselves and they knew enough to be thankful for it.His twin, as part of the service, she said, “Open your hearts to each other, open your inner lives. Your minds. Be together, each other’s. Cleave, as the good book says, unto one another. This advice, a newlywed myself, I leave unto you.”***Two women watched the wedding, one sitting on the front row, another standing in the back. In front was April Gold, the wife of Virginia Grey, the pastor conducting the service. She was happy for her wife, her wife’s twin, and his wife. Happy for the idea of them together. It was a good thing after a long, tumultuous courting. At the end of this happiness, was a sliver of hesitation, a slice of worry. Perhaps for the couple. Definitely for her wife. They had not been married long themselves. April was finishing a degree in Ministry. She was looking for a congregation. This meant a move for April as well. Marriage and job hunting and moving and the marriage of a loved one. Four big sources of stress. Virginia didn’t look it, didn’t looked stressed. That was one of the compelling mysteries about her, the peaceful way she always managed to appear. But April knew her wife well enough to know Virginia was hoping for some good sign, some bit of hope from, as April called it, the universe. She wanted to know she was still on the right track, that lives would work out for her and the people she loved. April was far more pragmatic. She made things go her way.This was the only thing she had in common with the woman standing in the back of the chapel, watching as Virginia said, “then by the power invested in me.” She was family. The bride’s side. She wanted to be helpful and she wanted to help herself. Nothing wrong with that, is there.She knew that townhouse. Already, the bride and groom had invited her in to make some repairs, expand the broadband capacity, repaint the room Virginia had slept in for the years, six or seven, before she had found April. They had invited her to watch their townhome to live in it. And she would. It was big enough, four bedrooms, places that would go unoccupied otherwise. Almost a crime, given all the homelessness in our nation’s capital, to leave those rooms empty. Elizabeth wasn’t sure how seriously she took herself when she had these thoughts. She’d been to the townhome before, working for her aunt’s boyfriend now husband, repairing sprinklers. Sprinkler Girl was the name of her on the edge of not being a business business. She’d begun sleeping in her truck the night after her landlord told her no more, told her there would be no more exchanges of work for rent. The truck was a red Datsun, red as her hair, with rust spots like leprosy. She knew if she asked them, if she just came out and said can I stay at your place can I until I get my feet back under me, they would say yes. She also knew she was slightly too proud to ask. It seemed easier to just move her tools in, park her truck in the parking place and live there. She could save them the embarrassment of being helpful.I THINK THIS MIGHT BE A CAPTAIN RILL TYPE MOMENT. I’M TELEGRAPHING TOO MUCH AND ROBBING MYSELF OF THE SURPRISE OF THEM FINDING ELIZABETH THERE.The honeymoon was posted online. televised. Well, not all of it, of course. He posted incessantly, but sex wasn’t quite his genre, his niche. William “Billy” Grey was famous for blogging about his life. Famous enough he made a good living at it. Famous enough for his politics, his discussions of religion, really his ability to say thoughtful, significant, meaningful things about public policy without being drawn too far into any specific camp. He was smart, quick online and in person. Most of all he looked astonishingly good on cable news. If there was hypocrisy, it was not obvious, or not completely ununderstandable. So there was an extent to which it was a professional necessity for him to take selfies saying good bye to his townhouse WOULD HE DO THIS? THE LACK OF PRIVACY IS THE POINT and his new wife’s distant relative who would be doing some light remodeling while they were in London, selfies of the ride to the airport, two of the flight, the landing in Heathrow, the apartment house in the city where they would stay.He noticed Cassandra “Sandy” Moore his new wife finding ways to not be in each and every selfie. This seemed selfish of her, a slight change since they had gotten married. He held his phone up in front of them as they sat side-by-side in a tiny pub, low ceiling, dark wood, heavy beams. He felt her flinch slightly, maybe slightly more than she had earlier when he’d taken photos of the two of them. But she stayed close, didn’t duck away. Her smile looked forced. At a gun point forced.“Be part of my life,” he said and waved the phone in front of them.“I want it to be the two of us,” she said. “You and me.”They’d talked about this before. Or maybe talked around this before. “It is you and me. Who else could it be?”“It’s everybody,” she said. “That guy over there. He could be looking at us on his phone.”“So? That’s okay. I’d like that. More clicks is more income.”She looked at her food. Stirred her drink.“My life,” he said, “is kind of my profession. You know this. We’ve talked about this.”“What did I say,” she said.“You said you wanted to be part of my life, but not part of my profession.” He was thinking of a headline. “Fighting on the Honeymoon!”“Maybe we needed to talk about it more,” she said.“We have a lifetime,” he said. “I’m looking forward to the conversation.”“I am too. I guess.”“Listen,” he said. “After this, the Tate.”“Okay,” she said.He kept his phone in his pocket all the way over to the museum, but the photos of the two of them looking out at the ocean just like the people in the painting, pretending to be in it, profiles in pointalism, was too good to pass up. She joined him for a while. She volunteered to take his photos before too long. She was good at it, he knew this about her, lots of framing in the photos she took, dramatic angles that didn’t call too much attention to themselves, but really highlighted the subject of the photo. So, he handed the phone over and she disappeared from the photos he was in because she was taking them instead. Cassandra had been, he knew this too, the yearbook photographer for each of her high school years, appearing less and less regularly in the actually book, but becoming more and more predominate on the masthead. They had a similar approach to aesthetics. Most of their fun in London was walking. A beautiful city for walking. They read Ulysses in the nude. They loved their honeymoon. One night, late, he was asleep and she had been awoken by the sound of a cabbie yelling at a fare trying to escape without paying. She found herself wondering what he wanted to do with the next day, their last day in London. He was a beautiful man. Open. He shared what he felt with her. Let her know what was going on inside that charming, elfin head. They were warm together under the duvet. What would he want to do their last day? How could she find out without waking him? Cassandra slept without pajamas. She’d always been more comfortable that way. She considered waking him up, played with the edge of his boxers for moment, but decided he needed his sleep. Instead she lifted the lid of his laptop. His calendar. Or a PDF of a receipt. Or, what could she find to read? Instead, he’d a published a post earlier that day. Hadn’t told her. Meet us at the Royal Shakespeare company tomorrow, it said. We’re seeing Macbeth! Maybe the thought she’d see it on Facebook? He knew she didn’t have a page. He said it didn’t bother him. She didn’t even have Twitter.It was a strange feeling, seeing something that she thought would be private, between just them, so public. She didn’t like it. It would be hard to talk to him about why. Not because he didn’t like to talk, but because she didn’t. It was a delicate thing, the boundaries between people. Giving up yourself to become part of someone else. How could she say she wanted to be his and herself? His and his only, but still herself. Maybe she was too set in her ways to fuse with anyone else. Maybe she was overthinking this. They had been together for a long time, but only married a week.She didn’t work in media, didn’t have the mindset, that way of seeing the world. Her job was basically to fire people for the government. When she opened her mouth, it was to tell someone bad news. Often. She kept secrets. Who was going when, in what order. Some deep part of her didn’t want anyone knowing anything, at least not knowing anything about her. She didn’t meet him online, didn’t run a background check. They were on the same train. She rode into work every day, or had. She wouldn’t need to from the new place. The government was a short walk away. But then their eyes had met as she dealt out her solitaire hand. He was writing a post about trains and infrastructure spending and wanted it to sound authentic, really. Wanted to at least be able to claim to have had the experience of being on a train. DO THEY HAVE TRAINS AROUND DC?“Poker?” he looked at her and said.“Sure,” she said.He was a beautiful man. He liked to talk and she liked to listen. It was fun to be on the train with him. A public, safe place, everyone with their only space, their bubble around themselves. She’d met other people this way. The old woman who taught her pinnuchal, the smiling twelve-year-old who shared screwball rummy with her. So, they played poker. People around them, she realized, at least some of the people, they recognized him. They nodded or waved. Each day that week they played together talking politics, about the trivia of this particular administration. She liked it. It was nice. He disappeared for a day or two and she went back to solitaire. But he showed up again. He would tell her later that after he didn’t need to ride the train, after he felt he understood enough of the actual experience, he missed her. Slightly. And went looking for her again. A few months later, she read about their meeting on his blog. Not too deep in the archive. The post had almost 10,000 likes. She liked it too. She just wanted it to be their moment, rather than the worlds.###Before he had asked her to marry him, before Virginia had gotten married and talked about finding a congregation and moving out and way, for the first time, before he realized how terrifying it would be to have his twin gone and gone long, at such a distance, before all of this, but in the moment he thought it might all be possible, he posted about it.Some people think out loud. They think by talking. His dad was this way. Not his mom. Not at all. FIND A PLACE TO MENTION THAT THEY ARE HAVING REPAIRS DONE BY A RELATIVE IN A SENTENCE EARLIER, BUT DURING THE HONEYMOONHe thought, he knew this, by posting. Posting and getting feedback from the comments. He had a community and they policed him and each other. He had critics among his followers, but he’d learned and posted about which ones gave the best criticism, which ones had ideas that lead to good and useful changes. In one window he would write and revise his posts in real time before anyone who watched, each letter, each deletion and enter key posted as he went writing and thinking. In another window, comments on what he was doing scrolled and ran up his screen in a blur sometimes. It was exhilarating to see it, to compose based on feedback given and rejected in a moment. He loved the deepness of it, how total his attention had to be on the task in front of him. Distraction was impossible. Giving himself to it that completely, no other way to go about it, kept him from the being too much about himself. It was like being with his sister. That engaging. Like speaking the language they had shared as little kids. That close. Without Virginia, without Cassandra, without posting, he would go crazy, he just knew it. Solitary confinement, without them.So, of course, his friends helped him ask her to marry him. They sorted and debated, gave him good and bad advice. He tried not to take any bad advice, but he did what they said. At least what the ones he liked said. He knelt in private, looked earnest and spontaneous and held the ring, already opened in its box, up in front of her. “Will you,” he paused as instructed, “marry me?”She hadn’t been surprised herself, but she had been excited, glad. Cassandra smiled so rarely. Almost never. He only smiled. He smiled too much. But when she did it changed him. An adrenaline rush almost. His heart accelerated. He felt it in his body, some kind of physiological change. This visceral feeling was a good thing and he wanted it.###They were happy flying back from London. Very happy. He was still posting everything, every moment and she was still not sure she liked that. She’d have to bring it up again, once more. She could do that sort of thing. Start difficult conversations. The townhome was tall and dark. A blue grey in the daytime, the windows were grim this late at night. Most of the street was empty, street lights only at the far ends of it and they were blocked by the leaves. They parked in front, on the street. He had the pattern of parking, days and times as instincts, he’d lived here so long. The bigger bags they would get in the morning. On the threshold, once he’d fumbled the front door open, unlocked, though she’d been there so many times, he tried to scoop her up and do that old fashioned carrying her across, through the doorway. They hadn’t talked about it, so she didn’t know what he was doing. The neighborhood was dark and silent, a contagious, but pleasant silence, and they were sleepy, jet lagged, whispering. She trusted him, so when he put one hand on her far shoulder and reached down toward her knees with the other, she didn’t bolt, and he did pick her up and she did smile. There was, she thought, no way of making a selfie out of this.So, Billy got his arms around her, bent his knees, kept his back perpendicular to the drop and held her up.“Tap the door open with your foot,” he whispered.She did and turning sideways so her feet and his right shoulder went in first, he carried her into the entryway, took a step or two more tword the second door, he’d have sworn he locked that too before he left, he almost always did. He had, hadn’t he? And set her down in the dark red living room. Billy could feel his own smile in the dark, guess at the familiar shapes around him, and he thought he could feel Sandy’s too, her grin or at least her happiness radiating. There was a bit of hushed laughter between them. He stepped back into the entryway, locked the front door, turned and stepped inside, locking the inner door, and turned back to Sandy, to be close to her and her smile in the dark.Something had changed. The dim shapes of the couches, the fireplace, were the same, but her posture, the way she stood, was alarmed, wary. Beyond her, through the arch way, there was movement in the kitchen. Someone there.His body changed. Fast, but not like when he saw Sandy smile. His body changed to mean, to rage. He felt Sandy feel it in the dark. On the end table next to the couch, sat granite bookends. They weren’t tall. They held just three books between them, all about website design, but they had a round end, a tiny globe at the top representing worldwide, and one of them fit in the palm of his hand like a club. He held it and stepped silently toward the kitchen.Someone was there. Facing the sink, back toward him. He set his feet to jump close and beat the other man down.“Elizabeth!” Cassandra yelled.She turned toward Billy as the front room light came on, filling the kitchen. “What the hell,” she said, her hands up.Billy’s arm was high over the head of a little red-haired woman who flinched away. She had a knife covered in peanut butter in one hand and toast in the other. A long pink tee shirt.“Who the hell are you,” he yelled and recognized her as he did.Elizabeth. Cassandra’s young cousin? Niece? They had hired her. She did handyman work. Sandy was beside her. And beside Billy. They were all talking.“You’re back?”“You’re here? Still?”“You almost brained me with that thing!”“He, we thought you’d broken in. We didn’t know.”Billy decided to stay silent. The anger was dropping out of him, draining fast. He could have killed this woman. She set the butter knife and toast down. Her nails were short. She had thick hands, light green veins. on the backs of her hands. Elizabeth crossed her arms, stepped back farther into the corner of the kitchen.“So, so, what’s going on? You told us a few days.”“It was more than that. More, obviously. I found dry rot behind the, in the walls.” She looked at the book end. “That would have hurt. A concussion.”“Yes, but you stayed over? Why?”“I, well, you know.” She stepped slightly closer to Cassandra. The shirt was big, came to her knees, she wasn’t wearing anything under it. Her hair must be long when not in a messy bun. “I didn’t have enough for a gift.” The woman exhaled. “I thought repairs. I’d trade work for a present. I mean work would be the present.”Billy and Cassandra considered this. They glanced at each other.“I glad,” Billy finally said, “I didn’t hurt you.”“Yes,” said Cassandra, “we both are.” She hugged Elizabeth, who hugged her back, eyes closed. “It’s late. This has been upsetting.” Cassandra leaned back. “You’re staying in the master bedroom?”“No. No, I’m downstairs.”“Listen,” she said, “we’re both jetlagged.” As she said it, he felt it. A weight, a heaviness on his body in his mind, slowing his thoughts. “You’re up in the middle of the night. At a strange house—”“I got hungry. It’s a long drive. Um. You know. Back to my place.”“Yes, sure. Let’s all sleep. That will help. Let’s all sleep and talk about this in the morning. Okay?”Billy said, “Let’s do that.”“Okay?” Cassandra said. “Tomorrow?”“Sure,” said Elizabeth. She picked up her toast. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry.”“Us too. Me too,” said Billy.Elizabeth moved toward the stairs that would take her to the basement. Billy took Cassandra’s hand, and they went upstairs. She turned off the same light she’d turned on.“What, what was that about?” he said.The master bedroom was the entire top floor. It was big. The master bath was the size of the bedrooms in the basement. “I think just what she said.”“I could have really, really hurt her.”“I know.’“Not like the movies, you know. People don’t just stand back up.”“It’s true.”“Damn it, Cassandra. That would have been bad. 911. This hour.”“Let’s sleep,” she said. “Let’s sleep and tomorrow things will all be better.”They curled up together, spooned and slept in the night.###WHAT WOULD JET LAG BE LIKE FOR THEM? WHEN WOULD THEY WANT TO SLEEP?Or tried to sleep. It must have been the jetlag keeping them awake. They were both alert as the dawn light began to fill the room. The walls were mustard, the trim bright white. The wooden floors were an almost dark wood. This place was hers, at least partly. She sort of wanted to make it hers. Mark it with her style maybe. She would paint the place? It was something to think about, something she might share with him. A project they could do together? But he was up too. Awake under the sheets with her. Both of them up much earlier than they normally would be. She convinced him to go for a walk. They would go together. IS THERE A STARBUCKS CLOSE BY?“Don’t wake her,” she said as they stepped through the kitchen.Both of them were careful not to look at the bookend on the island.“Don’t wake her?” he said. Billy took a quick photo of it.“Yes, don’t,” she said.Outside, on the deck, she looked down into the small yard. It was mostly brick patio with a narrow edge of potential garden. The fence was very tall, extra tall, at least a foot taller than he was. It was wood, a light brown. The gate in the fence led them out to the alley. He usually parked there. Cassandra’s car took up one space. In the other was a red pickup, old, not big, rusted. It had “Sprinkler Girl” and a phone number in white pealing letters on each side. A rack built out of the bed of the truck held hundreds of feet of PVC pipe. Tools boxes of different sizes and weights, sprinkler parts, tarps, a pile of dirt, and shovels filled the bed.“If we had pulled into the alley last night—” “The whole thing would have been different,” he said. “I thought she was a general handyman. Handyperson. Contractor.”“Yes. But sprinklers pay the rent. She told me,” Cassandra said.“She did?’ He was looming over the hood, looking into the cab.“What?” Cassandra could see that the front seat of the truck was one long cushion. Only the stick shift divided it. The rear-view mirror must have been broken off at some point. It rested on the dash. But what Cassandra saw was a grey-white pillow pressed up against the driver’s side door. Twisted over the seat was a course green blanket, wool, bound together with faded pink and white quilt. More a nest, than a bed.Billy took a photo.She turned him down the alley by taking his hand. They walked that direction, held heands swinging between them.“Please don’t post that.”“Hm? Why not?” he said.“It’s her private life.”“Her private life? But ours? She’s apparently been living in my house.”Cassandra said, “You don’t quite have a private life. You’ve made a profession out of it. Remember?”“Well, that’s—”“And, she’s been living at the house rather than sleeping in her car.”“I thought she said, I thought you said, she had a business. You know. A house. A place of her own,” he said. They had walked to the mouth of the alley. More traffic here. But not far away was a donut shop, a place that even sold breakfast crepes.“Could be I was wrong. She’s my Aunt’s daughter. I’ll ask.”“Good plan. Do that.”“But does the world need another homeless teenager? Really?” Cassandra said.“Who said homeless? Who said teenager?”“Okay. Twenties.”“Mid-twenties,” he said.“Okay. Whatever.”“And no, obviously, not homelessness. Or not having to live in her car. Who wants that? The basement is fine. I guess. The house needs lots of work.”“I was thinking about painting.”“It won’t need work for forever.”“That’s true,” Cassandra said.“She can make breakfast crepes runs for us.”“Fixing the house up is enough. Is all she’ll do,” Cassandra said. “At least until I talk to her aunt.” They waited for traffic to clear so they could get across together, hand in hand. “Do you remember her aunt’s name?”“I don’t,” he said. “I don’t. I’m just glad I didn’t knock her brains out last night.”###Billy was startled by the whole thing. He managed not to post the whole story by texting it all to his twin sister. The house had been hers too. She’d know what to do and how to feel about it all. By noon she’d replied, telling him to be happy. Telling him Elizabeth could be a far more interesting nanny than most. And he’d be doing a good thing. Maybe bring up rent eventually. Reminding him they were invited to her new house upstate for Thanksgiving dinner.He and Cassandra managed to drop into sleep late, late that afternoon. They tried to stay up to force their body clocks back on to East Coast time, but it hadn’t worked very well. Hopefully well enough. They would each need to get back to work. Billy could do most of his work at home. He researched, thought, wrote, and most nights entertained, at least one person, maybe two. He went out for some research, some interviews, but often he was at home. They both slept in the next day. She would take the train into her office, or had, notw, if she wanted, she could walk into THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HR OFFICE NAME HERE. It was different having another person in the house. Dating her had normalized his working hours somewhat, as he got focused earlier and stopped earlier to match her more nine-to-five work schedule. Really more 8 to six, all things considered. But yesterday he could hear them in the house, the two women talking a little downstairs. Elizabeth disappeared for a while. He heard her go. It was more distracting than he thought it would be. Cassandra, he knew, did not need lots of attention, probably needed less than he did, actually. But he found himself thinking about her, wondering what she was doing downstairs, much more than he had wondered what she was doing at her work. The next day she would be going back. They spent about an hour talking and eating lunch together. It was productive, all in all. Cassandra left early the next morning. She was excited to try walking to work. He closed himself up in the office. Elizabeth was gone, but for just a few hours. But she didn’t both him and he was guest editing a blog, writing an editorial, and trying to understand the administration’s stance on immigration, texting 19 or 20 of his contacts around town. He always, always to a moment to breath before sending a text, to remember who he was talking to and how they felt about the issues of the day. He was alone in his, office, no longer alone in his house, but interacting with online versions of people all day. It energized him, even texting. And that night he was ready to do to a dinner party. ###The first time he invited her in she said no. It really was late and she really did have a busy day, unplanned, not even completely formed in her mind. Just looming tension. But most of all she wanted to think, to process the day with him. Firm up her idea of what he was like. He smiled and said okay. Another time?That seemed right enough to her that she nodded back and hugged him. They parted on the street in front of his townhouse when she got in her car. The house itself wasn’t intimidating, but the block was, the address was. It was in a great neighborhood and it added something else unexpected about him to the package of information she wanted to unpack before letting much else happen between them. For her friends, the ones raised with siblings or in crowds of women, this would mean conversation. She knew that, but she had grown up alone, almost completely alone. Talking him over would be fine, but what she really wanted to do was curl up in her own apartment, her own room, on the fat chair, stare at the ceiling and let her mind wander over what she knew about William “Call me Billy” Grey. There, in that chair, the first thing she had remembered was the way he paid attention. She felt like his sole focus when they were together. It was unusual. He didn’t look at his phone, the TV over the bar, other people in the place. He looked at her. Slightly startling to be the center of someone’s attention, but it also felt good because, well, because he seemed curious and open at the same time. Asking her questions but also hoping, it seemed to her, to be asked. Ask me something, his body language had said, so I can answer. And so I can ask something about you.The second time he invited her in she went. The house was painted a soft blue, old even for DC, at the end of its row, with a basement and two stories. Bricks formed gentle arches over each window. A sapling in the small yard. The entry way was a short hall, but beyond it was a room with bright red walls, shiny leather furniture, sunlight, and an actual fireplace. The floor was wooden with thick rugs. It was warm and comfortable and looked like he cared for it, like he had a long-term plan for keeping the place nice. The corner closest to the street was a three-windowed nook, filled in the front room with a love seat. That was where they sat. His phone rang, the laptop on the other side of the room chimed again and again, his twin sister Virginia and her friend April Gold wandered in and then back out, but all he did was pay attention to her. Eventually, they made dinner together and ate out on the brick patio. They could hear distant traffic, but also the wind humming through the trees. He told her everything and it seemed easy for him. He wasn’t entertaining her, wasn’t putting on a show, looking to be liked, or followed. Late that night, he walked her to her car. In front of the townhouse, when he leaned close, she kissed him.###They got through that spring and summer together, the three of them, living in that house. Every job, no matter how small, Elizabeth did and did quickly, did well. She was accomplished. She never complained to Billy or Cassandra about the work or about how it might, if it did, cut into her own business. Most days she was gone for at least a few hours, doing, Billy and Cassandra assumed, sprinkler work. More than once they saw her truck out on the highway, red hair wandering out the driver’s side window. Neither of them, as far as the other knew, talked to her about rent, at least not yet, or about an exit date. She didn’t have anyone over, which they liked, and she usually disappeared for their weekly dinner parties. They invited friends from all the agencies and all bureaus, all the branches, all the publications, over. Sometimes a couple, sometimes more. Cassandra and Elizabeth talked much more than Billy and Elizabeth, but much less than Cassandra and Billy. They were perhaps still wary of each other after the kitchen in the middle of the night. He would see her, at the height of the summer, sunbathing in the backyard, when he came down from his office for a midday snack. She was beautiful, but he didn’t want to talk to her. He hadn’t had to wonder, not at all in his blessedly peaceful life, if he would fight or flee. He still wasn’t wondering, probably because he wasn’t quite comfortable with the knowledge that night had given him. It just wasn’t the kind of place, his city, for most people most of the time, where attacking physically others was useful. Words were the weapons. Words and relationships.Some nights, when he was going to be up late following a story, another midnight run to keep the government in business, he knew the two woman talked in the front room. Feet tucked underneath, cups of tea warming them. From fragments of conversation, he knew they talked about their jobs, about Elizabeth going back to school, about what all the sitting and digging was doing to their bodies. They seemed like good friends to him.###Mostly they were good friends. They talked. But there were things they didn’t talk about. That Elizabeth’s mother wouldn’t talk about her, for example, wouldn’t pretend to know what she was doing with her life or where she was. That, having heard the same how-was-your-day answers repeatedly, Cassandra was beginning to wonder if Elizabeth had a job, had a business, had clients. Elizabeth had skills. The house was becoming pristine. Her finish work, for example, was impeccable. Outstanding. All her home repair skill were beyond criticism. But, what did she do during the day? She knew she was gone, Billy told her that, but what was she up to exactly? She didn’t have money, but she didn’t complain about it. Didn’t want to draw attention to it. They talked, but Cassandra didn’t feel close to Elizabeth. Worse, some days, she felt at the edge of Billy’s life. She knew he texted Virginia at least three times a day. She knew he Facetimed with his dad and Skyped with his mother every day. She knew this because she’d started following him on Twitter, not because of any conversation they’d had.So, she and Elizabeth put in a garden, flowers and vegetables, along the fence. They worked it side by side weekends and nights. Lots of words between them, Cassandra felt—planting seasons, the best seeds, the worst fertilizers—but not much connection. And Elizabeth’s weekends were sometimes busy during the summer. She claimed to have lots of work to do, but Cassandra was rarely convinced. Cassandra’s own job consisted mainly of going through files, studying documents, and figuring out who to fire. In that little grey room in the basement, always big beefy ex-Marines around, police officers attached somehow to the NAME OF THE AGENCY. With one blank table and two vintage 1950’s metal chairs. Some days, she delegated. Other days, she did them all herself, one after another, back to back, her verbal statements very scripted. They folks getting fired were the only ones who got to react, emote, behave. Or not. Some silently listened, silently stood, and silently went to collect their personal items. The security personal, as they were called, seemed to worry more about the people who responded with silence than about the yellers and screamers, those with big gestures and wild arm swings. With tears, with stories of their lives. Whatever they did she had to keep a smooth professional face.Sometimes firing people was satisfying work. Those who touched others without romance or without a relationship. The people who tried, but just couldn’t make anything happen, couldn’t bring about change in themselves or others. The tyrants on the attack, firing people themselves without cause and then being surprised when they were let go.Most days it wasn’t satisfying work.###Virginia had a farmhouse. The winter have been cold, but dry. The drive was long and complicated because after the first hour Elizabeth, Cassandra, and Billy didn’t have that much to say. They drove in Billy’s car while he wrote, tapping incessantly into his laptop. He focused on that pretty quickly. Elizabeth listened to a “This Old House” podcast, dancing slightly to the bumper music. Billy and Cassandra had whispered under the sheets about bringing her to Thanksgiving. They had argued. Cassandra didn’t want to leave her alone during the holidays. Billy didn’t want his twin to feel any more stress. She would be feeding thirty-five people, including his parents. His family updated each other online so consistently, she wasn’t sure what they would have to say to each other in person. They’d already know everything about each other’s lives since the last time they’d talked. But the farmhouse was big and there would be strangers there, people from Virginia’s congregation and, Cassandra hoped, places where she could sit silently and rest. Driving now out to be that way. Her husband intent of his project, whatever it was, and Elizabeth, obvious to them, dosing and nodding her head at the same time. The Northern New York town was small and the farmhouse was three stories, tall as the town house with high, high ceilings and an almost maze like, at least to Cassandra, basement. They stashed their baggage downstairs. She and Billy had their own room, tiny, and would share a twin bed. The girls’ room, as Billy’s mom insisted on calling it, was much bigger and all the single women of all ages would bunk there. A similar arrangement had been made for the boys. Cousins from every state, second wives and third husbands. All their things piled and spread throughout the house. Sounds of a crowd ebbing and flowing in every room. The smells of baking bread, cooking soup, smoking—which Virginia strictly forbid—young boys, and the cat and dog that inhabited the house. The kids ran after each pet, the dog’s barks like laughter and the cat disappearing, becoming mythological, a rumor, a hidden thing under a bed one moment and a couch the next. The farmhouse was white, shaped like a barn. The fields around it were yellow with dried grasses and brown with furrows. April Gold, Virginia’s wife, ran the farming side of the place. She also worked as an illustrator. Billy, Cassandra knew, would be glad to discover the high speed up and download connections. She found her way outside. “A walk after driving does a body good,” she said to Billy and his mother.“But it is so cold!” she said. Billy’s mother had short grey hair. She usually got what she wanted and getting what she wanted was usually more important in and of itself than any collateral damage or disadvantage it might impose. The two women had always gotten along.“Just for a moment,” Cassandra said. “I’ll be right back.” She knows Billy’s mother wants to ask about grandchildren. Wants the three of them to talk together about it. She also knows she doesn’t know how she feels about having kids. She feels several things about it. Mostly she feels a child would be another person for her husband to love besides her. Another follower.Outside the cold grabs her. It is cold. Her nose immediately tingles and she stuffs her hands into her pockets. Her feet are quiet on the wooden porch. She can feel waves of warped boards under her feet. Something for Elizabeth to smooth, to fix without speaking, to talk without saying much about. On the gravel her feet crunch. Out in the dried grass, the crunching is quieter. He could have followed her out here. Why didn’t he?The windows of the farmhouse are golden behind her in the dusk. It took all day to drive here, beautiful as the place is in its cold, austere, take-your-life kind of way. Through those golden windows, she can see them all running and talking, yelling to be heard. It doesn’t look too unpleasant, but she doesn’t feel like going back in yet, doesn’t feel marshaled to work the crowd in the way Billy does, is doing. People fuel him. Not her.The whole thing was beginning to feel weird. An only child, her Thanksgivings where spent with math books in airports, shuffling between one parents and another’s. Some of that here too of course, but these people maintained relationships long after she and her family let them go, either through happy neglect like her father or abrupt door-slamming good byes like her mom.Cassandra looked over the house, the full lot of cars around it. She leaned against a dark fence post and wondered why she wasn’t happier with these people.To her left, she heard footsteps. April Gold, Virginia’s wife, came out of one of the smaller buildings at the edge of their acreage. She made her way with steady sure steps toward the house, looking down, watching her boots as she stepped. Cassandra held still, content to watch the woman pass not sure if she’d been seen and not sure is she still needed to be alone. April went inside. Cassandra could have said something, she thinks. Could have volunteered herself. Maybe made an ally. She has no good reason for not doing so except, what? Reluctance? Not in the mood for conversation? She’d spent the previous day firing people. Seventeen in all. Needing some time away from people was fine.###“Why doesn’t she want to talk to me?” Billy’s mom said.“She loves talking to you,” Billy said. “Give her a moment, mom.”They sat side-by-side on a couch, hot tea in each of their hands, a whirl wind of yelling six-year olds and a gleeful dog running in circles around them. Two couches, back-to-back, divided the kitchen from the living room. They sat on the side facing the kitchen.“How was the drive up? Does she want to be here? Or outside anyway.”“It was great. I finished another draft of an article. Of course, she wants to be here.” Billy shifted on the couch. Behind them, another couple talked. He knew they were relatives but didn’t think he’d ever met them. He turned slightly toward his mother so more children could race by. “How is Virginia?”“You saw her post?”“Which one?” He hoped the farmhouse, with its gas fireplace behind him and the wall of theology books—who knew there were so many kinds of bibles—to one side, indicated how well his twin was doing.“So, most of the congregation loves her. Just loves her. They are glad to see the farm being worked. They even like Virginia, if you can believe that. But they want them to have children. At least adopt.’“They want that? The entire congregation? Or you want that?”“Well, I want that, but I’m sure they do too. It’s the same thing.” His mom took a long sip of her tea. “And you.”“And me what.”“You know.”“Virginia’s congregation wants me to have kids too?”“Well?”“We’re thinking about it,” he said in between dog barks. They weren’t. Not really. Or she wasn’t. He had thought about it. It was lonely sometimes at the house. Elizabeth wasn’t really anyone he could or should talk to. He needed more company. Cassandra had literally been startled by the idea each time he mentioned it. But his mother was staring at him. Like examining him.“Cassandra doesn’t want kids,” his mother said as his wife came in the door behind her. Had she heard? The expression on her face said she had and Billy thought for a moment she was going to just back on out the door. But she didn’t.“We are talking about it, mother,” Billy whispered.“Evangeline Wilson? Eleven grandchild.”“Really.”“Agatha Daily? Eight.”“How can you bear to show your face, mother. The shame.” He tried to smile at Cassandra. Now, his smile had won awards. He was sure of it, but Cassandra rolled her eyes, stepped around one child and dodged another. But she was inside. Headed for the coat closet perhaps?“It’s not a contest, dear,” his mom said. “Cassandra!” she said, “come sit by us!”“Oh, I will,” Cassandra said. She managed to be smiling more, he knew, for his sake than because it was anything she felt. This appealed to him. It was kind of her. One of the boys hit the tall thin end table next to Billy and it wobbled, it and the hugely expensive lamp on top of it. Billy reached for the table, held it for a split second, but that was the amateur’s move. Holding the table while the lamp wobbled off it wouldn’t do. He grabbed the lamp instead and forced it to the table hard enough to still both, but not so hard either broke. This was a well done little bit of coordinated grace and quick thinking, if he did say so himself, but Cassandra had moved on, maybe hadn’t seen or cared. Part of Billy waited for someone to say, “Nice!” but no one would. His mom was sipping her tea, planning her argument for more grandchildren.“Slow down,” he said to the kids and the dog. The dog listened to him.###Billy listened while his mother spent a good ten minutes, talking about the obvious advantages of having children. Cassandra spooned her hot chocolate. She was watchful, smiled. He could see she was carefully not letting herself be distracted by the fireworks of arriving relatives and the greetings yelled by those already there. Billy watched her. At first, he was curious about how she would react. Cassandra was familiar enough to love, but enough of a mystery to be surprised by. The moments his mother provided for her to fill with noises of agreement or assent, not that she had to mean them or even—should she promise his mom a hundred babies in writing—do anything she promised, were always moments she had her cup to her beautiful lips or a spoon in her mouth. Once or twice she was even up hugging a stranger, one of his relatives.He didn’t want Cassandra to lie to his mom. Not really. But refusing to acknowledge his mom’s fairly reasonable questions, certainly questions any newlywed might expect, kind of rubbed him the wrong way. Kind of gave a faint blush of indignation and irritation to the moment. Even this faint blush felt like an overreaction to part of him, a part getting smaller by the moment. The next time a mob arrived to be grabbed and hugged, he managed to get up, be on his feet saying hello and giving greetings, putting his cup over by the sink, turning from it and turning back to wash and rack it in the dishwasher until, as he might have been hoping, a distant loudmouthed uncle took his spot. He shrugged at his mom and made his way to one of the football games on one of the televisions or computers. It had been getting loud enough in that front room, with the kids and the parents, the arrivals, the animals, the calls to shut the damn door, that he wouldn’t be able to hear what his mother was saying anyway. Cassandra probably couldn’t hear anymore either and she’d probably stopped listening long before she couldn’t hear his mother. It was easy to look at the game and think about everything else. That was the real blessing of football, Billy thought and quickly took a note or two about a post he might write about it. How is there this contrast between Cassandra and me on this important topic? he wondered. They are adults. Thoughtful people, especially her. They dated a long time and they must have talked about it. Billy puts his eyes on the spectacle, but he is thinking, thinking back to their conversations, the things they said over dinner, lunch. He is scanning for a conversation about children.Billy is not finding much. Then his mind snags on something sharp and his scanning stops, a long thin string of brain cells and membrane stretching back from the majority of his consciousness as if it had literally gotten hung up on a nail, on some sharp thing protruding from a slick surface. What if he had asked, I or my mom or somebody like that wants us to have kids? What will you do? Her remembers her saying the word “Nothing,” which he took to mean she would allow it, she wouldn’t prevent it, but by which she seemed to have met I’ll make no effort to have kids. She would do nothing.Of course, he had not realized, maybe had not thought enough about or that he wanted children either. But sitting here on his sister’s couch in the middle of Thanksgiving and a wonderful crowd of family, he couldn’t imagine a future without, you know, children of his own.###Cassandra discovers that the name of the man, a relative of some kind, one of her new-in-laws, is Reynolds. Reynolds looks her over like they are in a single’s bar rather than at a family reunion. He barges into Billy’s mother’s lecture about how badly the world needs to be populated so aggressively that for a moment Cassandra feels bad about feeling good about the interruption. Bald and fat, he has many opinions about when couples should have children and why. Cassandra is surprised to see that he is married actually, judging by the ring on his finger.“I told my wife, no children for us. I was against it from the start. I don’t think the return on investment merits it.”Cassandra listened, waited, watched. Billy’s mother tried to ignore Reynolds, but he scooted forward to the edge of the couch. He sat with his knees wide so his belly dropped between his thighs. He leaned toward Billy’s mom. Cassandra’s plan had been to wait the lecture out and then thank Billy’s mom for her thoughts. She had wanted to be noncommittal, but she knew she didn’t want children soon. She and Billy still had a lot to learn about each other. They still had each other the explore and discover. Adding children now, any time in the next few years, seemed to her to be only a way to dilute the alloy she wanted to be with Billy. “My first wife,” Reynolds said, “I wanted to have kids with her. I knew she was rich when I married her. I knew that one was a peach.”The expression on Billy’s mother’s face told Cassandra that Reynolds was not only not her favorite person but becoming less and less a favorite the longer he spoke. She seemed to have slipped into an appalled silence.“But, like a good trout, she slipped off a my hook.” Cassandra could hear the leer in his voice and found a way to be looking elsewhere. She leaned over and touched her mother-in-law’s knee. “Have you seen the place settings?” she said. If her mother-in-law said yes, Cassandra planned to say she hadn’t and ask to be shown them. If her mother-in-law said no, Cassandra planned to offer to show them to her. But Billy’s mom seemed frozen by Reynolds’ ugliness. Cassandra tapped her knee. “Let’s go look at them!”She stood, took the woman’s hand, and helped her up. “Bye Reynolds!’ she said and led Billy’s mom away, depositing her cup and saucer in the kitchen on the way. Billy’s mother was quiet in the hall, but in the dining room, she said, “Such a child, that Reynolds. I dislike him.”“Yes,” Cassandra said. “Not very empathetic, though I’m sure he has other strengths.”“I’m not,” Billy’s mother said. “But do you think you’ll be having children of your own soon?”“Can I think about it, BILLY’S MOTHER?” Cassandra said. “With the job, the house, Elizabeth. Well not so much Elizabeth. She’s actually pretty helpful. When she’s around.”“Oh, yes. Quite the skilled young woman, I understand.”“What would she make of those . . . What are they called? Cornessesses? The opposite of baseboards?” The dining room, and across the foyer from it, the living room, were both very formal, both much nicer than a farmhouse would suggest. The walls were white and smooth, and the rooms were big, wide. Each had a long table, white table cloths, something right out of Norman Rockwell’s painting. The plates were white china as well, with a thin gold rim. The stoves in the kitchen were full and half the people who arrived carried crockpots or other appliances which they plugged in to keep their contents warm. The counters were crowded with them.“April and Virginia do set a fine table,” her mother-in-law said. “When could I come and visit you, dear? Get to know you better.”“You know we would love that,” Cassandra said. She touched a fork, straightened the pair of them. “Let me talk to Billy. You know how complicated his schedule can be.”###The meal was monstrous. She and Billy sat sit-by-side. Having him there was comforting, though he seemed kind of distant. There were a lot of people here and it was distracting. Loud as ever. Elizabeth seemed to have made or been friends with two women her age. They gossiped about a production of “The Vagina Monologues” one was participating in. In the distance, the woman sitting next to Reynolds stood and threw her napkin at her plate. She walked off, while he laughed, probably at her expense. Other than that, the meal was a blur that sounded like a riot. Well, a polite riot. Growing up an only child, with parents who hated each other, Thanksgivings for Cassandra were usually instructions on reheating a frozen chicken pot pie. Her parents each tended to disappear from each other’s lives on the holidays. They would be gone and not notice each other’s absence. Each apologizing for not being there when neither had noticed the other was gone or that, it seemed, she’d been alone, quietly eating her leftovers and watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. The conversation around her was lively and a bit loud. April Gold, who sat at the opposite end of the other long table in the living room, seemed about as dismayed by the noise as she was. In the prayer before the meal began, and she noticed some moments of silence or other quite protests in the room, Virginia mentioned the Uzmans. Billy was talking about football to a teenager, so Cassandra asked the handsome stranger next to her who they were. “Relatives who couldn’t make the trip?” she said.“No, no,” he looked around the table where he sat and leaned forward to look into the other room. He was older, with military short grey hair. A fit older man. “Everyone who might reasonably be expected is here.” He leaned back, fork in his left hand, and speared a bite of turkey, running it though some tannish gravy before answering. “A family in her congregation, I think,” he said. He glanced at Virginia, who was talking and at a distance. “The Uzmans?” he said. “Anyone?”She hadn’t quite wanted a discussion among the entire family about these folks. Who knew the bones in other family’s closets. She’d had just a quick sort of ice breaker in mind. A chat. But once no one could identify them, once there wasn’t a story to tell, the older man’s attention turned back to his plate, particularly the potatoes. So the conversation washed around her, but she pretty quickly didn’t have anything to add or anyone to talk too. Mostly that was okay. Cassandra was good with solitude. But she did feel, as Billy’s conversation turned from professional to college football, at the margins of his and his family’s lives. The Uzman’s, Virginia says, maybing having noticed Cassandra’s lack of conversation,###On the way home, once Elizabeth wore her head phones and once they could hear her music, Billy asked Cassandra, “So, are children completely out of the question?”She was driving and he had started the trip staring intently into his laptop. Now he turned toward her. She was watching the road.“Well,” he said.“I’m thinking,” she said, “but of course they’re not completely out of the question. Of course not.”He had work to do. He had only posted about half of his family reunion thoughts. His notes. Hadn’t gotten to the football post yet. He had plenty to do but this was bothering him, and it shouldn’t be. The idea of holding a baby had taken up residence in his mind. Converting one of the bedroom into a nursery. Blue or pink or whatever. He and the child could throw a ball back and forth. A football. Out on the patio or in one of the parks. Prepping the room, converting it, could be the last thing Elizabeth does before she moves out. “I mean,” he said, “I know it’s complicated for you. For women.” She still faced the road. Didn’t look at him. But then, this wasn’t television; she had to watch where they were going. But then, the road was long, with the gentlest curve, and only a few cars from empty. “I don’t mean to minimize that,” he said.Cassandra just watched the road. “I’m thinking,” she said.Well. He could let her think. That was fine. He could let her think all day. It mattered to him, no one could doubt that, but she could think all damn week, and he wouldn’t let it bother him.Elizabeth listened to her music, which both Cassandra and Billy could hear, it was something classical, for the next 98 miles. Billy had even began writing again, tapping away, one idea leading slowly to and other, or, as likely, jumping from one another and then having to slowly thicken the connection, having to figure out why the two ideas had been connected in his mind and then evaluating the connection. Was there anything there? Could it be strengthened? Was the connection worth the effort making it required? How did it help his argument?Cassandra said, “I was an only child passed between two people who didn’t really like me.”For a moment, Billy didn’t know what was going on. He realized she intended this as a reply to his question about children. “But” he said. “That’s not us. We like each other. I like you.”“I like you too.”“Okay, then. What do you think?”“I’m not sure, Billy. I do this sort of thing really, really slowly.”“Have kids?”“Make decisions about my life.”“I’d like to have children in my life. You know. I need people. Gobs of them.”“I don’t. I need a person. So, like you. You I mean.”“Well, yes. Sure,” he said.“Let’s try more you and me. Before we add another.”“But,” he pointed his thumb toward Elizabeth in the back seat.“She’s around, but not really part of us. Not really.”“Well. We’re already you and me. I think,” he said.“Let’s be more you and me,” she said.“That’s what a child will do,” he said. “It’s something we can do together.”“It’s not a hobby.”“I know that. I know that.” He didn’t like what he was feeling, didn’t like how those words sounded. The anger in his voice didn’t sound like him or didn’t sound like he wanted to sound. He wasn’t like that. “Listen,” he said, “this is important to me. But I can be patient. I’m a patient kind of guy.”“Okay. Be patient then.”Damn it, he thought, she won that one. He’d keep talking to her though. The discussion was important. It mattered that they were having the conversation. That mattered. Billy wondered for a moment how Elizabeth felt about Cassandra having a child. It might be good to find out. Allies never hurt. Mostly Elizabeth was silent, quiet, but he could ask her how she felt about having children. Maybe tomorrow, once Cassandra went to work, he’d bring it up. Just ask her. They hadn’t really talked much and asking her would be a way to change that to get a conversation going with her. Elizabeth would probably appreciate being asked. ###When he said, the next morning, “How would you feel about having kids?” to Elizabeth, she dropped her plate. She fumbled it over a sink full of soapy water, the remains of friend egg whites and sticky yellow yoke still glued to the dish.Something about this and the expression on her face and that these may have been the first words he spoke to her in months—family reunion not withstanding—and that she was a young woman who—whether they acknowledged it or not—had no shelter other than his house made him say, “No wait. What I mean is . . . What I’m asking is . . .” while all the ways he had been a fool slowly became clear to him. He was, he realized, blushing. “No,” he said. “Yes,” he said. “That was the wrong way to put it.”Elizabeth stared at him. She faced him, heavy tool belt piled on the island next to her. A hatchet-like hammer rested on top of it. For roofing, he stupidly thought. Her shirt was an untucked, green plaid. He made his living with words. He ought to be able to be able to talk to anybody about anything. “I’m looking for insight into Cassandra. I’d like children to be something she’s interested in.”Her stance shifted slightly. He was watching the hammer, hoping she didn’t club him with it. The undercurrent between them couldn’t always be this way, could it? “I phrased that poorly.”“You’ve asked her, of course?”“Right.” How dumb did she think he was?“I don’t know what else to suggest. It’s not an issue for me. Not necessarily an issue for every woman in your life.”“Okay. Sure.”“That’s more a question for your mom. Don’t you think?”“No, you’re right. You’re right.” They’d already talked about it, obviously, Cassandra and his mom. But another discussion might not hurt. Or several. He could invite him mom to visit. She didn’t have much else to do. One of the rooms downstairs was empty. “The other guestroom? Does it still smell like paint?”“Most of the fumes are gone.”“I might have her visit. My mother. That bathroom is big enough for you two to share?”“Suppose so,” she said.###Cassandra used her phone to text Billy. That was pretty much it. If her phone was a book it would have one page. If his phone was a book it would have thousands of pages. He used it for most things, for everything. If contacts were needles, his phone would be a porcupine. It seemed futile to text him, sometimes because of this. How could a note from her stand out? He couldn’t see her text in the library he received each day. It seemed impossible to her. It wasn’t going to happen. When they were dating, she had been special. Now, married only a few months, how could he tell something from her from everything else he received? So, she was happy and excited when her phone chimed. She and her team had been working through a sexual harassment case. Mistakes had been made. Obvious ones. And the layers of dishonesty were difficult to keep track of. Creating a timeline, usually complicated, was especially demoralizing. A quick break, she said, and picked up her phone, heading out in the hall.It was Elizabeth texting her. That was nice, but also new. She mentioned some details about one of her sprinkler maintenance jobs and asked about dinner. She found time to cook for her and Billy and as a result their diet was slowly becoming vegan. They had noticed, and had talked about it, but it was so convenient! They let her cook. Elizabeth also mentioned that Billy’s mother would be staying with them. Billy has said so, Elizabeth said. Staying perhaps permanently.Usually, she found about this sort of thing, these big changes in her life online, through his social media. This was private, sort of. But Billy hadn’t asked Cassandra about it. They hadn’t talked about it. Why wouldn’t he want to know how she felt about it? Was she that unimportant?And Billy’s mom, whether he knew or intended it or not, would want only one thing. Probably. Would want only to talk about children. Probably in an uncomfortable amount of detail. The pressure to decide, to stop taking the pill and actually go through with it, bring another life into this crappy world, commit to that life for the rest of her life, through the sexual assaults, car accidents, shootings, workplace hostilities, hospital trips, through all of the disasters that await . . . through all that crap. She wanted to think their child would have a wonderful experience, a wonderful life, but the odds were slim. Nothing about the way she spent eight hours of her life everyday suggested things would be good for any baby they had. And the baby and all that trauma would be another thing between her and Billy. Another way she would be displaced, more at the margins of his life and really her own. Cassandra held her phone. She considered what to text Elizabeth. Finally, she sent “How nice!” and went back to work.###“Any news today,” she said to Billy that night.They were in the process of getting in bed. She’d just started reading a new fantasy series, had gone out and bought all four volumes, each as thick as a something. They were stacked on the night stand. On his side of the bed were three or four charging cords for the phones, the ebook readers, the batteries for when his phone drained.“Yes,” Billy said. “You won’t believe it.”“What?”“Reynolds is getting divorced again.”She wasn’t . . . “Who is Reynolds?” Why wasn’t he telling her about his mother?“Disaster of a man. My cousin. Nephew? A relative. He was at the reunion.”“Big guy?” she said. “Needs a shower?” This is what he has to say? This rather than his plan? Rather than someone moving in with them?“And a shave,” Billy said.“So,” she wasn’t sure what to say, “how many—”“This will be the third. Can you believe it?” He wasn’t looking at her. He was thumbing through screens instead.“Will they be friends after?”“I doubt it. I can handle Reynolds, but most folks can’t. And she’d kicking him out. Tomorrow morning.”“Where will he go,” she said.“Nobody knows.” Now he was texting someone. It seemed. Not her. He wasn’t asking about her day. Sometimes he did, even if it was to see how many people she had fired that day. Only one. A social worker who dabbled in child pornography.Eventually, Cassandra reached over for the heavy paperback. She opened the cover, turned a few pages, pressed the book open and started reading.###Billy spent the next day in a Senator’s office. They were talking and finally, perhaps arguing, about wild horses. The horses ate all the good grazing on land in the Senator’s office. This made things tough on the cattle ranchers. The grass that had feed cows was always gone. The question was always what to do about the horses. Billy had dared DC traffic for this. THE COLD THE WEATHER CHILL AND SNOWBy the time he got home it was late and getting dark. A strange car was in his spot. Not the spot where he habitually parked. The spot assigned to him off the alley out in the back behind his house. Elizabeth’s truck took up the other spot. This did not make Billy happy. He couldn’t park at his own townhouse, couldn’t even park in a way that boxed the strange car in without blocking the alley. Which would get him towed. Billy drove around the block, once, twice. He could see Elizabeth and Cassandra in his front room, through his front window, but couldn’t reach either of them. They were talking to somebody he didn’t recognize. Finally, a place opened up and he parked.Reynolds was sitting, fat and ugly, in his living room. Around him, barely inside the door, were towers of cardboard boxes. Dirty clothes hung out of them. Most hadn’t really been sealed or packed or packed well.Reynolds stood when Billy came in. He could tell from this distance a shave and a bath were still required, but Reynolds opened his arms wide and leaned in for a hug. “Thank you,” he said, stubble scratching Billy’s cheek. Behind Reynolds Elizabeth scowled and Cassandra stared. “Sure. Sure,” Billy said. “Taking me in like this,” Reynolds said, “I didn’t think you were a kind enough person. I didn’t think you helped people.”What did this stinking man just say? Billy thought.“And I’ll be out of your business in a few days. You’ve lots of room here. Sort of palacial estate you’ve got set up for yourself.” Reynolds was still hugging him. Would the smell transfer to him? His clothes? What was going on?Billy let go, stepped back, and Reynolds came with him for a second before letting go himself. He grabbed Billy’s shoulders instead.“I didn’t think you’d amount to the kind of man who’d have a place like this,” he said grinning. His teeth were yellow and his breath smelled of sewage. “Thank you, Reynolds. I guess.” Reynolds had been invited in, apparently. Invited in to stay. Invited in without anyone asking Billy. But he thought that can’t be right. Cassandra, Elizabeth they aren’t the types of people who would betray him.There was chit-chat for a few more moments. Reynolds complaining about the unfairness of the divorce. His current wife, the one divorcing him, they had been fighting. Angry, he had only gone back to his previous wife for the weekend, for three or four days. The locks were changed when he got back to his current wife’s house. How was that fair? he said. Everyone else in the room seemed to resist answering, not without some effort, at least on Elizabeth’s part. Eventually, when his behavior wasn’t anything any of them wanted to hear, when they couldn’t encourage him at all, when the silences between his statements about his ex-wives, statement he made without using any of their names, when they weren’t encouraging him to talk, he said he was going to bed. “Wake me when breakfast is ready,” he said. Reynolds looked at Elizabeth. “Just tickle my toes,” he said.When he had left the room, the three of them sat in silence for a moment. “How did this happen?” Billy said. “Who extended the invitation?”Cassandra raised her hand. Elizabeth stood up. “I’ll let you two . . . you know,” she said. “Talk.” She trotted toward the stairs.“What?” Billy said. “Why?”“Anyone with a heart runs an orphanage,” Cassandra said. “We’re people with hearts. Right, Billy?”“Yes, of course. But is now the best time . . .”“Why wouldn’t it be?” she said.He had told her he’d invited his mom down, hadn’t he? He would have to call his mother now. Have to explain her trip would need to be canceled. “Well. You know. Hadn’t we thought about that room as a nursery?”“Had we? Did you mention that to me?”“I think I did.”“Well, even at the shortest that would be a year away, right? Maybe more.”“No. It could be less.”“But it would take time to get the room ready. And any baby would sleep in our room for the first few months. Any child would. Reynolds will move out in a year, don’t you think?”“A year?” Billy lowered his voice, wondering at the same time why he did. The house was his. It would do Reynolds good to know what people thought of him. But Billy whispered, “I was thinking three days.”“Three days? You don’t want to help an adult for any longer than that, but you think we ought to have a baby?”Billy sat up straight. What had she said? “What did you say?”“You heard me.” She was whispering now, always a bad sign. Cassandra had dropped her chin. She looked at him through her eyebrows.“How can this be about that,” he said. Billy stood. “Upstairs,” he said. “Let’s talk there.”“What’s wrong with right here,” Cassandra said, but she slowly got up anyway. Upstairs, Billy was thinking, I’ll be able to yell at you, but he hated himself for the thought as he had it. No. He wouldn’t do that. And hours later when they were still arguing in polite circles about the issue, he still hadn’t. Adults and babies are different, he claimed. Exactly, she said, if you’re not ready to help an adult, as able as they are, there’s no way you’ll be ready to help a child, as helpless as they are. Wait, he said, you agreed with me that babies and adults are different and then you pointed out a similarity. A similarity? She said. That they need help. Adults don’t need help. We’re having this conversation because an adult named Reynolds, one of your relatives, needs help. He almost said, at least I have relatives, but he didn’t. he stopped himself. Elizabeth doesn’t need help, he said instead. And you don’t like having her around, Cassandra said. You wouldn’t want to help a baby when it needs help and you wouldn’t want to help it when it became a child and needed less help. Elizabeth and Reynolds aren’t good examples, he said. What’s wrong with Elizabeth and Reynolds? She said. He’s basically a teenage boy, don’t you think? She said. They went on like this for hours.In the morning, Reynolds left his breakfast dishes in the living room and somehow the bathroom Elizabeth reported. Billy tried to work all day, but Reynolds, who either didn’t have a job or worked from home or a combination of both tuned Billy’s stereo up louder than he knew it could go. He thudded around the house. The loud music helped him think he said or yelled rather. They had to yell to be heard.Billy resisted posting about the whole thing. He wasn’t sure why, exactly. He didn’t want to see this aspect of his life online. He was going to have to tell Reynolds to clean up after himself and at least be respectful. Stop leering at Elizabeth. Move the moving boxes into his room down stairs. Most of all he thought don’t be around when I host my dinner party this weekend. Get a job or at least look like you’re working. Groom yourself. ###Cassandra didn’t feel that guilty. It didn’t bother her that much. She worried a little for Elizabeth, but the girl was tough, she thought. Strong. Spending less time at home. Billy and Reynolds might be killing each other soon, but she kind of doubted that. Besides it really would be good training for having a belligerent teenager around the house. It was good for Billy to see what it might be like. She doubted any child of theirs would be as bad as Reynolds. The thing she worried about most consistently was their becoming friends.That would be a disaster. That also seemed very unlikely. When she got home, Billy was always ready to go out. When they were out he worried about Reynolds trashing their place or hassling Elizabeth. When they sat down with Reynolds and agreed on a date by which he would have work and move out set a date, he ignored it, or he asked why Elizabeth didn’t have to move out. SCENES? This lead to a tour of the house with Billy pointing out repairs Elizabeth had made and Billy critiquing those repairs, bragging about how he could do better. Them Billy would point out the repairs Elizabeth had made of damage Reynolds caused. He was not not drunk he conceded about falling down stairs and pulling the bnister off the wall in anger after. Soon, Cassandra thought, Reynolds would be bragging about his boxing skills, about the back alley fights he had won. Billy had already, she’d seen in on his phone, begun researching when a house guest becomes a trespasser. At the same time, his mother stayed away, all while praising him for being so helpful to Reynolds. And, Cassandra usually thought, they were being helpful. Who knows what would happen to Reynolds without a place to stay? DC, the world really, doesn’t need more homelessness. Reynolds alone, stewing, no way to vent, not even the communal arguing Billy provided, that was the scary thought, Cassandra told herself. That would be the worst. They weren’t talking about having children anymore.###Virginia called on the afternoon of the 22nd of December. This was far from unusual. She asked to be put on the speakerphone and for all four of them to be gathered around it. Cassandra wondered if Billy had asked for his twin to run some kind of intervention? Was that what was going on? It wouldn’t work. It didn’t seem likely. Reynolds didn’t think much of Virginia and made that clear each and everything she came up. Cassandra knew this was another thing that bugged Billy about him, bugged him most of all.They gathered around one of Billy’s phones in the blood-red living room. It rested on the coffee table. They sat on the leather furniture with the exception of Reynolds. He stood, still him his pajamas. Virginia’s stressed face looked up at them. Her skin was flushed. She must have just come in from the weather, the chill.“I have a favor to ask you all,” she said. “Do you remember the Uzman’s?”“Uzman’s?” Cassandra said. “The family from your prayer?”“That’s right,” Virginia said. “Thank you.”“Who the hell? And,” said Reynolds, “why the hell?”Cassandra pictured her husband strangling Reynolds, Elizabeth calmly, unflappability holding the same award Billy had threatened her with in her left hand and bludgeoning Reynolds while she and Virginia screamed. But nothing like that happened. “A, you might say,” Virginia said, “troubled family in my congregation. And because you’re good people. Or at the very least because I’ve done you favors in the past. Or, if it helps you be helpful, Reynolds, so that I might do you favors in the future.” Her face, as she’d spoken these last few sentences, had moved closer and closer to angry, but she let or willed it to soften now.“I’m convinced their oldest child is going to run away from home.”“Well, I mean,” Billy said, “What can we do?”“Take him or her in,” was what Cassandra kind of wanted to hear. Even she was getting tired of Reynolds. But Virginia said nothing like that.“Can you drive up and help me search?”“But,” Elizabeth said, “the kid hasn’t run off yet? Are you sure it will? Shouldn’t we wait until they actually do?”“I know it’s going to happen. I know it,” Virginia said.“God said so?” Reynolds said.He was carefully ignored.“What about, you know,” Elizabeth said. “The police?”“That would make things worse.”“Because?’“The dad and police don’t get along.”“So,” said Billy.“They aren’t . . . I like to think they are professional enough to look for the child.”“You like to think that?” Billy said.“Yes. I like to think that,” Virginia said. “They don’t like the entire family.”Reynolds was laughing quietly, waving his hands, smiling through the stubble. “No, no,” he said. “A pass from me. Do your worst Virginia. I’m not going to help.” He was looking around expecting, Cassandra saw, the others to agree with him.She shrugged. “At the worst, we spend a few days walking around a small town looking for this kid. At the best, we have cobbler in your kitchen, Virginia?”“At the worst,” Reynolds said, “You end up shot by both the family and the cops.”“Nothing like that,” Billy said. “I’m sure nothing that bad.”But Virginia didn’t say anything.“We can start up there in the next half hour? You think, Cassandra?”“Sure,” she said, but Virginia’s silence bothered her. She could have been more reassuring.Elizabeth said, “I actually have to work. Tiny bit of remodeling while a client travels for the holidays.” She seemed to notice how Reynolds leered at her. “Otherwise, I would totally be going with you.”Whatever happened up at Virginia’s, Cassandra found herself thinking, the worst would be returning home to a crime scene.This hadn’t occurred to Billy. He always wanted to see his twin. “Cassandra and I will start up. There before midnight. No doubt.”Cassandra tried to make eye contact with Elizabeth while Billy and Virginia said their goodbyes. She wanted to connect with her, let her know she was sympathetic and concerned, but she had no luck. Reynolds had stomped off. Virginia promised to be up and waiting for them with April.“You’re sure you can’t cancel and come with us?” Cassandra said once Reynolds disappeared and Billy was upstairs.Elizabeth chewed her low lip. “I am sure,” she said.“Do you want me to stay?” Cassandra said.“No. I’ll be okay. You two do enough for me as it is.”“You’ve done a lot for us, Elizabeth. We can stand to be live here now. And we will be back. Probably sooner than anybody,” she thought of Reynolds, “thinks.”“Okay,” Elizabeth said. She seemed to be indifferent. Mostly.###They talked about this all on the drive up to Virginia’s house. Elizabeth and Reynolds. But they also talked about Virginia and April. And what little, almost nothing, they could guess about the Uzman’s.It was perfect. He had only her to focus on and she had only him. The one-on-one moments were some of her favorites from their dating life. They could be together, the two of them. Always they had each other to listen and talk to, to think out loud with. Attention felt good. Eye contact when it was possible, and the sort of pleasant risk of too much eye contact, too long looking away from the road, added a nice tension. This, just the two of them, was perfect for her and she couldn’t believe it wasn’t perfect for him. She felt like she could tell him anything. So she did.“My parents hated each other. But my dad kind of liked me. At least once.”“What do you mean?”“So once. This was long after they actually stopped living together. Started shuffling me back and forth. He came to pick me up at the airport and he had some sort of date with him. This woman. An outdoors type. Those yellow hiking boots and plaid, but all the time. You could tell she wore only that kind of stuff and all the time.”“Okay.”“And he had a dog. One of the dangerous breeds. My dad was an outdoors type too. Himself, most of the time. Most of his life. So, he had lots of dogs. They must have driven for hours, like four or five, to get to the airport from the cabin where he lived then. But the dog bit me.”“What? Why?”“I was a stranger, I guess. It just lunged at my wrist. I was waving too fast, my dad said.”“In the airport? Right there?”“Yes. And he kicked it off my arm. It kind of squealed. And he went after it. It was on a leash. Not long and he stomped on the dog, got his boot on its throat and crushed it Pinned the dog and stood on its neck in the airport.”Billy wasn’t saying anything. This is the first time she has told this story to anyone and she’s not sure what to expect of how people will take it.“Were you okay? Were you bleeding?”“Sure.”“What happened?”“He just, he killed the dog right there. And then we left. It wasn’t quite right I know.”“You left? You mean the medics at the hospital gave you stitches? Did they arrest your dad?”“Arrest him? No. The dog had attacked me.”“Well, that’s true. That’s right.” He’s looking at her and driving. The road, then her. “You left?”“Yes. I had my luggage. We went out the door.”“Wow,” he said. “I didn’t know.”“And the woman? She asked to be dropped off before we even got back to the cabin.”“But what about your arm? How many stitches? Do you remember?”“I don’t.” Her memory of the stitches was vague. The scar on her arm was big, on the inside and back of her arm. Was it an emergency room? A vet’s office? The stitches were the kind that dissolved, she remembered that. Her dad had asked for that.“So that was over a holiday? A summer? How old were you?”“Thirteen. It was a summer. It was the best summer.” Summers with her dad were lonely in the mountains. Summers with her mom were lonely in the city. She hiked a lot, while her dad did whatever he did during the day. Tended his garden. She’d realized that the plants he grew were questionable somehow. The mushrooms were suspect. That cabin had a greenhouse, though not all of them did. Buckets and long black sheets of plastic as well. He dad had a lot of books about gardening. She would read them aloud to him the nights when he was there. Lots of travel. His cars were always in excellent shape mechanically, though they looked beat up. She tended the plants while he was gone. Some days and nights alone. Lots of days and nights alone. Billy looked at her. “I hadn’t heard that story. That’s one I would remember.”“A bigger than life kind of guy. For sure.”“What was your friends name? The one in the city?”“Ben.”“Yes, Ben. What did your mom say about the bite? Your friend?”“My mom I didn’t tell. You know she’s not a talker. It would have just lead to more fights, more of them yelling over the phone.”“But, she didn’t notice.”“Nope.”“Ben? Or no, wait. Sorry.”Billy was apologizing, she knew, because he had realized Ben would have died by then, by the time she was thirteen. Ben had noticed. Her friend from down the hall. They learned so much from each other, but she wasn’t enough to keep him in the world. He’d started giving stuff away, including his diary. He gave it to her and made her promise not to read it. She had, of course, how could she not, after everything. And he had noticed her arm. She read about him noticing. I DON’T KNOW IF I WILL KEEP THIS. IT SEEMS LIKE IT IS TOO Tangential.The only interruption is a text from Victoria. It says the Uzman’s child has run away. ###The town was not that big. Two stoplights, maybe sixteen blocks. The farms and hills around it stretched however forever. Victoria told Billy that she had called the police, of course. And they had said they would be on the lookout, half-heartedly. Most of these runaways, they had started. He knew Victoria didn’t doubt what they said, necessarily, but it was too easy to use numbers and statistics to bunt any sense of urgency. She had texted them to meet in a café under one of the stoplights. The town was all browns under a grey sky. The missing child, Victoria told them had black hair, wore black clothes. They worried about depression, suicide.“Whoa,” said Billy. “What do we say if we find the kid? Isn’t their training?”“Of course,” Victoria said. She looked at Cassandra. His wife probably didn’t have first-had experience with talking someone off a bridge or something. But he realized something Victoria already knew. Cassandra, while her specialization was firing, had experience with all kinds of HR issues, including incredibly upset employees. “I can give him the training,” she said to Victoria. “Power point is right on my phone.”“Just walk the streets?” Billy said.“Yes. Watch for the hoodie. Black. About the only one in town.”“Okay. Well. Okay.” Just to walk around, they’d driven this far? But what had he expected? She’d called and texted the kid. Contacted all the friends. Impressed the seriousness of the situation upon them. Maybe it would be easier because he doesn’t know them. That might be true. Maybe, having alienated all the other adults in town, he wouldn’t hide from them because they were strangers. “Just be looking,” Victoria said. “Here,” she said, “we’ve divided up the map.” On her tablet, she brought up a multicolored PDF, pointed out their location, gave them a color. Blue is was. The town was small but it had only been divided into three or four areas. Billy wanted to know what kinds of streets they would be walking along. He has sold pesticides in Houston one summer as a teenager and had been given bear spray or dog mace because none of the people he was working with wanted him to get a dog bite. It was on his mind because of Cassandra’s crazy story earlier today. On his mind, but the dog was probably not the craziest part of that story, he thought. He was kind of glad, in a way he had not been before, that he wasn’t ever going to visit with the man. The downtown was empty, buildings two or three stories tall at the highest. He wondered a little about the history of the place and googled it and read what he found to Cassandra who found some of it interesting, but who also, she told him this, worried that they wouldn’t see the hoodie, the child. Robin, Victoria had said, was the name. The town had very little traffic and the traffic it had moved very slowly. Old truck, bubble shaped and curvy and cars as old as well. The downtown had an almost empty used book store, a garage, a burger joint, one a franchise and the other another national franchise. No tumble weeds rolled down the main street, but it was very quiet. Too quiet. Spooky quiet. Side streets were about the same with big white houses, white picket or chain link fences low around them. Most of the lawns were immaculate. He could imagine neighbors peering at each other’s yards and plotting to have better rose bushes next year. The houses got smaller as they walked toward the edge of town and worn down. Paint peeled from the wooden houses, in some cases with such ferocity that the shavings, as they peeled and prepared to drop from the houses, looked more like fur. Finally, they stood at train tracks. In an empty gravel yard. The rails were all the color of rust, the gravel grey. He could hear the trickle of water in a distant drain pipe.“This isn’t going to work, is it?” he said.Cassandra shrugged. “It seems too soon to give up.”They turned and made their way back toward the center of town by a different route. It was beginning to get really cold, frigid. Too cold for holding hands, so she tucked hers in the deep pockets of her hoodie. Billy took gloves out of a pocket.The next two days were exactly the same. Sometimes on the edge of the area they were supposed to search they saw other couples or individuals looking earnestly. They never saw anyone who matched Robin’s description. The failed search made the Christmas season dreary. Of all the searchers they were the only ones who stayed at Victoria and April’s house. It was hard to have fun. Victoria was especially distraught. April was, forever, steady, unflappable. She would not be fazed or emotional about anything. Billy had found this off putting and irritating at first, as he and April had gotten to know each other, but he could see its appeal now. She was a steady point in Victoria’s life. All the crazy in a congregation could be overwhelming. April’s steadiness was probably appealing, probably helped offset all the emotional wear and tear of all the drama a couple hundred people and their children provided.He wondered about Robin Uzman’s father. What was it like to have a child go missing? They hadn’t and wouldn’t have a chance to meet the Uzmans, not even to offer their condolences, their well wishes rather. How were they dealing with it all? He knew it was na?ve, but he hadn’t thought seriously of the responsibilities involved. He’d have to take care of any children they had. Feeding and clothing a boy or girl didn’t seem, really that difficult. He and Cassandra did pretty well financially. He’d been posting several times each day, generating clicks. They would be able to deal with any typical expense having a child might bring, he thought. But what if it wasn’t normal? Or what if like this it went missing. Or what if it just made fairly typical mistakes? Car wrecks, for example. And those typical mistakes could easily become full blow, genuine catastrophes. The kinds of things that totally mess up huge percentages of lives, whether the lives of the kids or of the parents or of both. He thought he’d thought about life pretty thoroughly. Maybe he had, but he knew too that thoughts and theories about a thing are not the same as the experience of it. He hadn’t, for some reason—maybe the pressure and enthusiasm from his mom—thought about children that carefully.In the bed in the attic of Victoria’s house he said as much to Cassandra. The attic was one big room a warped wooden floor under thick carpet. The bathroom was a spiral staircase down stairs from it. In the summer it was cool—those windows propped open—but this time of year all the heat in the house rose to it. The ceiling was low and came to a point, but the best thing about the attic was the sunlight that always streamed through two small windows, one at each end of the place. An even better thing was the bed. High and heavy with comforters and blankets. The best mattress in the house, though how it had found its way up here was one of the great mysteries. They were shoeless on the top cover, staring into the peak of the room, when he told her he was warier now of having children. They had been walking all day. The room was pink with the last of the sunset. Victoria was downstairs, weepy through dinner with despair, but having told them they obviously would need to get back to their own lives. Cassandra laughed when he said what he did. A minor sort of laugh, not much at him or at her but at, kind of, humanity in general. She smiled and said, “I’m feeling the opposite.” She rolled onto her side. The shirt she wore twisted tight against her torso. “What?”“I know it’s a cliché,” she said, “but looking has been something we’ve done together. We’ve spent more time together looking—”“—and not finding—”“then we would have otherwise. It’s something we do together.”“We do lots of things together.”“Yes.”“A cliché because . . .” he said.“Because kids as a source of bonding? Between a couple? It gets better or closer as a result of having a baby? That’s a cliché. A dangerous one.”“I didn’t know they could be dangerous.”“Sure,” she said, “if you build your life around one.”Billy thought about all this for a moment. “Well, I don’t know if I’m actually ready,” he said.“Oh no,” she said. “I feel the same way. Nine months? That’s forever. My body would be a different thing.”Oh, Billy thought. That’s true too. How could he not have thought of that?“No reason to change what we are actually doing, in other words,” she said.He cleared his throat. “What are we actually doing?”“I’m taking birth control. Genius,” she said.“That’s right,” he said. “I knew that.”“You did.”“Yes.”“Sure. Sure, you did,” but she was smiling as she said it. ###The next morning was Christmas morning. They had an excellent, enormous breakfast with Victoria and April before packing up. Victoria planned to continue searching that day. She was going to talk to the police and the newspaper again. While Billy and Cassandra loaded the car, April took a break from her farm chores. Billy watched her approach, watched her walk toward them.“Thank you,” April said, “for driving all this way. For coming up to help us look.”“Of course,” he said. Those may have been the most words in a row he’d heard, even after all this time, from April. He hugged the woman and his wife did too. The three of them chatted, soon moving to the porch and inside to the living room where his mom had urged children upon them. April returned to single word answers to even the most open-ended questions, until Victoria came down, thick coat and hat, hiking boots, on. More hugging, more goodbyes, as April returned to her work.Cassandra and Billy drove Victoria into town. They parked long enough for her to kiss them both farewell. In the rear-view mirror, Billy watched his sister looking over her shoulder, wondering which way to begin walking. She looked down—praying?—and then started toward one of the streets they had obviously searched many times before.Three hours later they stopped for a meal. It took some looking to find an open place, but not too much, not this close to the highway. A bit of a diner. They sat at the bar. The cook himself came out of the kitchen to take their order. He owned the place and could usually cover the Christmas day crowd himself, he said. Liked giving the women who worked there at least one day off. Cassandra and Billy were each about halfway done with their burgers—moist things with lots of good ketchup and pickles so crispy they crunched while chewed—when someone walked into the diner. Billy was starting in on his fries when a smiling teenager, young and happy looking, asked he could have a bit of change, some gas money.The cook, Billy could see in the reflection of the stove top, grimaced. So, Billy made a point of saying it was no bother. He’d be glad to help out. He’d been down on his luck too. In fact, he wasn’t going to be able to finish his fries. The kid could have them.Billy put a ten-dollar bill on the countertop, slid it toward the kid and realized he was wearing a black hoody. Black clothes generally, in fact. In fact, looking at the teenager before him swallowing fries three or four at a time, he knew this was Robin Uzman. They chatted the three of them, without making introductions, without using names, thought Robin, if this really was Robin, wouldn’t know they were connected to his sister. Billy will wonder when he thinks back on this moment months and years from now where he told Robin they were headed south to DC or if Cassandra said it first. And which of them, given the talk about gas money, offered to give Robin a ride. Why would they? Gas money. Maybe that didn’t mean you needed money for a car you actually owned. Maybe you asked for gas money as an act of faith, in anticipation of owning a vehicle that might need gas one day. Conversations are fuzzy enough while you have them, much less when they are remembered. He did know that he was driving. He did remember lifting the turn signal, clicking it south, farther from his sister and her congregation, farther from the family that at least in some degree wished for their child back. He knew he turned toward his home, rather than Robin’s. The entire drive down the kid smiled. It didn’t seem to be a strain. It seemed to be a happy smile, but Robin didn’t look either Billy or Cassandra in the eye. Billy watched the teenager, not more than fifteen, in the rear-view mirror. Maybe it was a I’m-getting-away-with-it smile. Maybe it was just happiness. Billy couldn’t remember which of them found out or how they “discovered” that Robin had no place to stay. What was it in the conversation that revealed that? They talked, almost without break for the entire trip down. By the time they arrived it was understood that Robin would come into the townhouse with them at stay for at least a while. This was crazy. They knew who Elizabeth was, knew her family and what she did. Cassandra had babysat her in the distant past. They’d been exposed to Reynolds. The extent of his jerkitude was common knowledge. Robin was young, sure, but unknown. Completely unknown. Police departments might not want to search for someone because he or she is dangerous, or just because a family complains all the time for no good reason. Cops are human. Lots of bad reasons. If this was Robin. If what Victoria had said about the Uzmans was accurate. This kid seemed normal enough. Somehow, maybe because they didn’t know how to explain, not even to themselves, what had happened, they didn’t tell her, didn’t tell Victoria. Not yet. They would text and Victoria would call. That conversation would be strange for Robin to hear. What would happen? Would Robin jump out of the car?They didn’t have a room of course, but there were still two empty couches. They didn’t know the details of why running away had been so important. “Is anyone looking for you?” Cassandra said. She held up her phone. “Would you like to make a call?”“No one cares,” Robin said. “I don’t want to call.”###The townhouse was dark. Cassandra had texted ahead. Someone, probably Elizabeth had tucked sheets over the leather couch in the living room. It was easily deep enough and long enough to be a bed, a bunk. They put Robin under a thick quilt, under a heavy blanket. They said they had other guests, a man and a woman, but it should be okay. And then, Billy and Cassandra went up to their bedroom to sleep.“What the hell?” Reynolds said as soon as they closed the door.“What the hell? What the hell are you doing in my bedroom,” Cassandra said. The tension about what they seemed to have fallen into doing spilled out of her. And what was Reynolds doing?“Elizabeth told me,” he said. “Thanks for the text! That was an awkward conversation.”“What was an awkward conversation? Why would you have any problem saying anything to Elizabeth?” Billy turned on the light.Reynolds’s right eye was swollen, black and blue.“You jackass,” Billy said. “What did you do?”“Don’t worry about it. She can take care of herself. She straightened me out.” As he talked, Cassandra could see that he was missing a tooth. She wanted to go see Elizabeth, talk to her, make sure she was okay. THIS PROBALBLY NEEDS TO BE CUT. THEY WOULD AND PROBABLY COULDN’T QUIET CALL THE POLICE. RASIES A COMPLICATION TOO LATE IN THE NARRATIVE. “Elizabeth told me,” he said. “Thanks for the text!”“What are you doing, Reynolds?” Billy said. “This is my room. Get to your bed like a normal person. It’s the middle of the night. I’ve got things to post.”“I can believe you’re allowing some stranger—”“We let you in,” Cassandra said.He barreled on past her words. “—who none of us even know a little bit to stay!”Reynolds was sitting in one of the chairs in the bay window. Between that chair and the other one was a nightstand with a small lamp. Billy turned on the lamp as he sat down. Those chairs were comfortable, plush. Cassandra didn’t want to have to throw either of them away but really felt compelled to, felt she needed to, because Reynolds, historically unwashed Reynolds, was sitting in one of them. Maybe she would just never sit in that particular chair again.“It’s too late,” Billy stared a Reynolds. “The decision has kind of been made.”“Kind of? Did you ask Elizabeth? Because you certainly didn’t ask me.”“Of course, we didn’t ask you,” Cassandra said. “You’re a guest,” she said. “We didn’t ask your permission.”“But I’m a guest!” Reynolds said. “I was here first.”“No,” Billy said. He crossed his legs slowly. “I was here first. I decide who stays.”“Are you threatening me?” Reynolds said. “You want me to leave?” You think you can just tell me to go?”“I know I can just tell you to go,” Billy said. QUOTES A LEGAL STATUE? ITS IMPLICATIONS?“Your unpacked boxes are still by the front door, Reynolds,” Elizabeth said.He looked at them, from one to another. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing right now.”“Believe it,” Billy said.Reynolds stood. “Well, frankly, I’m hurt by this. And I’m hurt you’d invite this potentially dangerous stranger into our house—”“—it’s my house—”“without a hint of consultation. What do you think will happen when that kid’s redneck, hillbilly, AR-15 loving family figures out your address?”“They probably haven’t figured it out yet, Reynolds.”“You don’t know that. You don’t.” He pulled his robe tighter around his belly. “I’m hurt you would risk the health and lives of us all,” he said. “Also, we need more breakfast cereal.” He walked out of the room.They could hear him, on the steps, realizing that he would have to walk right past Robin at the bottom of the stairs. Somehow, he would manage, they were sure.But after he had posted about everything but Robin, when they were in bed curled tight against each other, Cassandra had to whisper, “How safe are we?”“Robin’s tiny. A little kid. Even for that age.”“But you know. Guns,” she said.“Yes, well. We have no guns here.”“Obviously Robin could have one. We could have talked about it more.”“I doubt it. When would we have talked?” he said. “We’re going to have to live with it now.”“We didn’t even tell Victoria.”“It was all in the moment. Events flowed. She’ll understand.”“No, she won’t,” Cassandra said.“The kid is safe. That’s what matters,” he said.“I’m going to call her right now.” She lifted herself out of his arms, up onto one elbow, started reaching for the nightstand.“Please don’t,” he said. “Please don’t. It’s the middle of the night. Waking her won’t do anything more than panic her.”Cassandra thought about Victoria and Billy. She thought about twins and their growing up together. Together for so long and then she came along. Broke them up. Kind of. Cassandra worked her way back under the covers to the warmth there.###In the morning, Robin was still on the couch. It was early. Mild grey light. Cassandra tiptoed past and discovered Elizabeth in the kitchen. Together, they went out on the deck. Their clothes were thin and it was cool. Almost cold. They huddled together over warm oatmeal. The lawn furniture was frozen for a moment or two, but warmed under their bodies.“Was Reynolds a creep?”“Easily scared away.”Cassandra wondered what that meant, exactly. But they had other things to talk about. “Robin’s on the front couch.”“So I saw.”“We don’t know much . . .”Elizabeth had her hair in a tight bun. She had some skin cream left on her face from her nightly beauty treatment. “Doesn’t look like a threat.”“I don’t think so either. But we’re in a weird spot.”Elizabeth just stared at Cassandra, waiting for her to finish. “Victoria doesn’t know Robin’s here. And Robin’s folks don’t know. And Robin doesn’t know we know Victoria.”For a moment, Elizabeth’s cup of hot chocolate came to a stop between the tabletop and her mouth. It paused there. Elizabeth swallowed slowly. Then she took a sip. “I’m no lawyer,” she said. “But kidnapping?”“What? No. How? Robin came willingly.”“A minor. Am I right? Custody?”Cassandra sat back against the chair.“I mean,” Elizabeth said, “Robin’s parents are understanding, right? They will be happy you drove so far with their kid? Provided a place to sleep over night?”“Not good,” Cassandra said.“Right?”“Billy and I need to talk,” Cassandra said. She left Elizabeth, moving past Robin and up the staircase, remembering to sneak only when she was almost next to the couch. But it was too late. Robin and Billy were in the kitchen.“You know, Cassandra,” he was saying to Robin, “always picking up strays.” But he smiled at her as he said it. “Have some more to eat? Another day or two is no problem,” he said.“Um,” Cassandra said.“So, Billy said, “the plan is all the sights. Everything. All the museums. He hasn’t seen any of it.”“I haven’t,” Robin said.“Okay,” said Cassandra. “Okay.” It might be good to get out of the house. See someplace different.“You said you wanted to explore the city? Know the history? This is your chance,” he said to Robin.Robin shrugged. “For sure. Let’s go.”“Um,” Cassandra said, “Billy, I want to shower really quick. Can help me for a sec?”“With what?”“You know we can’t go out without making ourselves presentable.”“I guess, but—”“Just come upstairs for a moment.”Elizabeth came in. She locked eyes with Robin and there was, even Cassandra could tell, an immediate attraction.“I can wait for you guys down here,” Robin said.Upstairs in the bathroom, Cassandra whispered about kidnapping.“Be serious,” Billy said. “There is no way.”“Victoria knows his family. Why not ask her.”“I already told Robin we would tour the sights.”“Wanting to give a tour won’t keep us out of any kind of jail.”“Just relax.” He turned from her. “You wanted to get ready. Let’s do that. We can worry about Victoria later. Its nothing.”Cassandra watched him move into the shower. Usually, often, they showered together. Not today. The togetherness she’d felt yesterday evaporated in his movement just now, the easy way he was almost picking Robin over her. Maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe she was over reacting. It was just a moment. It was just a second. It was no longer Robin as a bridge, but instead a way they would be separated. A barrier between them. And if this stranger was that, a child would be worse. Apparently, the whole point of the relationship was to have children, but that would be a wedge, really. There just wasn’t enough holding them together, Cassandra thought. She wanted someone who would focus on her and he wanted everyone focusing on him.Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it was too soon. She would spend the day with them.She could see Billy enjoying himself. He wasn’t enjoying himself with her, at least not directly, but it was fun for her to watch him. He loved the city and he loved being atour guide. He showed Robin everything. All the spots. They wondered through the zoo, the art museum CHECK THE WEATHER OR REMEMBER IT OR REVISE FOR IT. MORE SETTING. And she began slowly to feel he could be having all this fun with this stranger and still make her way back to him. There was a sickness she felt at the same time about this. She was giving up again. Becoming less. Giving away apart of her, something she was allowed, ought to be able to expect and rely on, his attention and getting nothing in return.Billy in the meantime, knew he was looking happy, knew he was looking good. He took some joy in this, but just some. He could see Cassandra growing impossibly even more quiet. He felt torn between entertaining Robin, something he was used to doing, had been doing, made his living doing, whether entertaining Robin or the world. Posting to the world. More, mostly, he wanted to reach out and connect with her. Like the world needed another homeless teenager. But he wanted to be attending to her too.The day had been enormous fun. SCENES IF NEED BE, IF I HAVE THE WORDS, AS PART OF REVISION. The three of them sat at a single-story pizza place. Robin had asked for two seats when the waitress asked. Billy said three before she could step away from the pile of menus.Then Billy said, “Robin, I have to confess we haven’t been perfectly honest with you.” ###This surprised Cassandra. But why not say it? Why not be honest? Reynolds cold probably think of a reason, but she wasn’t him. Cassandra decided to support Billy in this. Robin was half smiling, trying to smile, looking around the restaurant warily.“Do you know who Victoria Grey is,” she said.Robing blinked. “That pastor.”“That’s her.”“The one that tried to calm my folks down,” Robin said, spinning a spoon“We hadn’t heard that. Don’t know anything about details.”“I thought so. You look so much like her.”“It’s true. Twins.”The spoon spun in a circle in the middle of the table. The three of them let it go. “What are the odds?”“Slim,” said Cassandra.Robin stopped the spoon. “You called her already. They are all on their way here.”“No,” Billy said. “They don’t know yet. If you need help, it doesn’t have to be from them.”“I don’t need any help.”“Everyone in your situation says that.”Robin spun the spoon again. “But I really don’t need help.”“That’s the other thing everyone in your situation says.”“I’m not going back. Your sister is the only one who cares. The only one. And that just because it’s her job. Her profession.”“Why did we give you a ride? Spend the day with you?” Billy said.“You’re her sister. You want to please her.”“But we didn’t call her this morning.”Robin stopped the spoon, spun it again. “I guess not.”The waitress sauntered up to their table. She must, it seemed to Cassandra, have been on her feet all day. She walked like they were sore. More out of habit than anything else the three of them ordered. It was what was done in a restaurant. She wondered what exactly needed to change now between them. How long could Robin stay? IS THIS WHAT SHE WOULD WANT? WHY? Not long. Victoria still needed to be told, after all. At least Cassandra thought that. She wasn’t sure what Billy thought about the whole thing. Robin might be a nice buffer between Elizabeth and Reynolds. She’d feel safer for Elizabeth if Robin was there during the day.“You’ve done enough for me already,” Robin said. “I can buy you lunch.”“Not to worry,” Billy said. “It’s on us.”“Well,” Robin said. “At least let me buy my own food. You gave me breakfast, the ride down.”“We can pay for you, Robin,” Cassandra said.“It’s okay,” Billy said. “Whatever.” Was he upset? Mad now, after all this, over such a simple thing?Robin said, “My money is in the car. Let me run out and get it.”And, she couldn’t believe it, Billy gave up the keys. Cassandra stared at him while Robin walked out the door, spinning Billy’s keyring on one finger. She pulled her phone out. 911 didn’t seem right, but Robin was obviously going to drive away with their, well Billy’s, car.“Wait,” Billy said. “Just wait.”“Why? Do you want more trouble for the kid? Why would you do that?” They had parked close to the door. She was expecting to hear the car start IS THE KID OLD ENOUGH TO DRIVE? And looked down at her phone again.But before she could find and dial the non-emergency number, Robin was back inside, walking toward them.###In the morning, though, Robin was gone. Cassandra thought she’d heard noises in the night, maybe Elizabeth and a midnight snack, Reynolds weirdly moving his boxes perhaps, or all three of them talking. She had woken enough to see Billy, sitting up straight in bed, listening, she thought. Whatever happened, the couch where Robin stayed was empty in the morning, the sheets and blankets folded and stacked on the pillow.Elizabeth wasn’t someone who told people things. Not a talker, that girl. Had they asked Reynolds to keep a secret he would have told everyone. They didn’t, and somehow he seemed to forget Robin had ever been there. Anytime they thought he might bring it up, he managed to start talking about himself instead. Cassandra worried to Billy about Robin. They worried together and for months wondered if each homeless person they saw was Robin. But maybe it had turned out okay, they told themselves. Good things might still happen. For some reason she was more tempted to tell April Gold than anyone else, but she would never let herself. She didn’t know if Billy ever told Victoria. Thought she waited, Cassandra never heard about any of the Uzmans again.After Reynolds’s marriage eighteen months later just the three of them still lived in the townhouse. Asking Elizabeth to move out was as strange an idea as asking her to flap her arms and fly. Their tiny garden still needed replanting, the compost pile needed turning, little as it was. October would arrive and they would have to clean the gutters and downspouts. In December, they had to keep the walk and deck free of snow and ice. Billy would post photos of them working. The routines they set for themselves were part of how they stayed together. Every summer they would consider new air conditioning, every winter a new furnace. As Billy lost more hair he wore one cap to keep him warm and another to stop sunburn. As Cassandra got older she wrapped blankets tight to stay warm and drank ice water to stay cool all within the same five minutes. When Elizabeth finally moved in with one of her boyfriends, the townhouse became too tranquil, too quiet. Together they discovered the peace of an empty nest without ever having had children. What has changed, the change that ends the possibility of other changes? The climax?GIVE CASSANDRA/SANDY JUST ONE NAME?BILLY’S MOTHER NEEDS A NAMEWHY RUN AWAY?THAT V HAS TALKED TO THE local MEDIAA LIST OF REPAIRS ELIZABETH COULD HAVE MADE RobinDifferent voices how? Specifics of syntax19079 19619 2026418000 Tuesday20000 Thursday20100 by the end of the break ................
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