“Me either,” says Natalie.
“Can’t you buy the house, Natalie?” Mae asks, to change the subject but also because she’s curious. “You’re rich.”
Natalie snorts. “Well, no. I’m not. And also, just no.”
“But you are. You guys have an empire.” Mae’s favorite time of the year in Natalie’s tradwife empire is autumn, when the foliage turns in Vermont and Natalie’s social media is full of astonishing yellows and oranges framing the farmhouse and the dairy barn. There are (were?) lots of good things about living in Boulder, but the absence of a real New England fall is not one of them. In Natalie’s October posts there’s always lots of plaid flannel—even Cinnamon dons a plaid bandanna—and there are scarecrows and apples and videos of Natalie herself pulling a loaf of homemade pumpkin bread out of one of the two side-by-side ovens in the sixty-six-inch baby-blue Viking range. (After her first visit to Hillside Haven, Mae had googled the oven and learned that the range cost nearly forty thousand dollars. Not four thousand, which would have been enough to pay a few months of Mae’s former apartment share in Boulder. Forty.)
The Christmas season is also something to behold. Sleigh bells ring (they actually do) and Scarlett and Evangeline wear matching red velvet dresses with white bows at the ends of their French braids as they hang ornaments on a Nutcracker-tall tree. Natalie herself always has a grown-up version of her daughters’ dresses, with maybeone or two differences to give it a Hot Mom vibe, like a low V-neck where theirs have Peter Pan collars, or knee-high Stuart Weitzman boots instead of the girls’ patent leather Mary Janes. It’s a fine line, the line between wholesome and hot, and she walks it like a tightrope artist.
“Not sure we do anymore,” Natalie says to her Dixie Cup. She’d been able to put a plug in her thoughts about the article for a little while, as her father’s announcement took over, but wine and fatigue have loosened the plug, and it’s all threatening to pour out, all of her anger and disappointment. She may not be showing it yet, but she’s really rocked.
“What do you mean?” demands Jordan, sitting up.
“Nothing.” She holds her cup out to Jordan. “Please, sir, I want some more.”
Jordan refills Natalie and Mae. “I mean, I think he can make exceptions in his will or whatever if he chooses to, but, yes, when Dad dies, assuming he does not outlive his wife—” Natalie snorts. “Assuming he does not outlive his child bride,” continues Jordan, “everything will go to her.”
“Does forty count as a child bride?” Mae wonders.
“Yes,” say Natalie and Jordan together.
“That’s all fine,” says Natalie. “From a financial standpoint. Who cares. We’re adults.”
Easy for you to say, thinks Mae. Her thoughts again go to the storage unit, the car, the bank account.
“But from an emotional standpoint, that’s not fine at all,” concludes Natalie.
Jordan undoes her body ball, floating her arms behind her head and her legs in front of her, and says, “Hold on. What if they have a kid? Then what?”
“Kara’s too old to have a kid,” says Mae.
“It’s not out of the realm of possibility,” says Jordan.
“Ew, that’s so gross.” Natalie covers her face with one of the pillows from the bed, then uncovers it enough to say, “To have a kid you have to have sex.” She whispers the wordsexas though she’s at a middle school slumber party, as though she herself does not have three children and a husband.
“Well, obviously they’ve consummated the marriage,” says Jordan. “More than once, probably.” She pokes Natalie in the leg. “That’s how that works, you know.”
“Ew,” says Natalie again. Her voice goes so high and strident that Leo lifts his head and stares at her.
“You’re okay, Leo,” says Mae. “You’re a good boy. Settle.”
“Leo’s okay, but we’re not,” says Natalie.
“Has he ever mentioned kids with Kara?” asks Jordan. “That actually is such a horrifying thought.”
“Kara could be pregnant right now, for all we know,” says Natalie.
“Don’t ever say that again,” says Jordan.
“Would that be so bad?” says Mae. Her sisters turn on her, four blue eyes blazing at her. “What?” she says. “Don’t look at me like that, it’s a hypothetical.”
“Of course that would be bad,” says Jordan. “In so many ways.”
“Well, maybe not to me. You guys already got to be older sisters. I never did. I only got to be the baby, always the baby.”
“Being the baby is the ideal scenario,” says Natalie. “Better than the middle!”
Jordan rolls her eyes and says, “It’s good to know your middle child complex is alive and well.” Natalie shoots her a look. “And Dad is not young, in case you haven’t noticed,” Jordan says to Mae.
