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“Do you regret moving to Schuywich, Evelyn?”

“Regret?” You lit a cigarette, exhaling with a contented sigh. “No, never. Do you regret not moving down here to the city?”

“Sometimes I wonder what our lives would have been like if I’d come to you instead of the other way round. We could have been part of all this.” I waved a pastry vaguely toward the window. You knew what I meant.

“But we made our own community, didn’t we?” You held up your coffee cup for me to refill from the carafe. “I mean, sure, in the city there are places where we could have been more ourselves, but we made a bigger difference upstate than we would have down here. Not every lesbian can leave her hometown, Hazel. You’re proof of that. The bridge club we started has been a lifeline for our friends. I mean, what would Rhon have done with herself if we hadn’t invited her over after she came home from the Peace Corps?”

I laughed. “Remember the look on her face the first time she walked through our front door? There she was, thinking she was the only dyke in the county, suddenly realizing there were other women just like her on every chair and sofa cushion in our living room.”

“It’s hard to believe we were around her age when we started that club,” you said between bites of pastry. “Things are changing, Hazel, little by little. Who knows? Maybe one day we’ll be able to marry for real. In the meantime, we’ll have our trust and our careers and our home and each other. I’ve never wanted more than that. Have you?”

There was a time I would have said yes, I did want more. A child of my own. The brother I’d lost. The niece I never knew. My parents to love me for my true self. I could still conjure those age-old longings, but I was too kind, that day, to speak the words out loud.

“Of course not, Evelyn.” I took the cup from your hand and crawled under the covers beside you. “We’ve got time before we have to check out of the hotel, don’t we?”

You kissed me and murmured, “Yes, we do, baby. All the time in the world.”

That was twenty-five years ago, Evelyn. I’m eighty years old now. You’re eighty-six. I’ve never had a ring to commemorate our union, but we’ve been together nearly six decades. That’s longer than my parents’ marriage. Longer than my brother’s life. When I saw The Children’s Hour, I assumed a girl like me would always be miserable. You’ve made me happier than I ever thought possible. Is it greedy for me to want one more summer before you forget my name?

With all my love, now and forever, Hazel

Chapter 36

“That’s it, tap right there, along your cheekbones.”

I do as Sandra instructs, hammering the blunt ends of my fingertips against the bones beneath my eyes.

“Don’t forget to breathe, now. In for four counts, hold for four, exhale for four. Keep it going.”

Sandra’s voice crackles through my phone’s speaker. A backdrop of blue sky and red rocks in Sedona, Arizona, frames her face on the screen. I breathe in, hold, breathe out, sigh.

“Next, you’ll tap the points on your upper chest, like this.” Sandra holds her phone out to demonstrate, hitting a spot beneath her collarbone. I prop mine against the stack of books on my nightstand and follow along.

“Spend as much time tapping the chest as you like, Audrey. When you find a tender spot, stay with it for a while. Make sure you end in the center, though, on the breastbone, to energize the thymus. You’re doing wonderful work.”

“Thanks so much for this, Sandra.” When I called her this morning, I forgot about the time difference between New York and Arizona and worried I was getting her out of bed. Instead, Sandra answered from Slide Rock State Park, where she was taking a sunrise hike along Oak Creek. I told her about David’s shirts and how hard I’d cried, but also how well I’d slept afterward and how much lighter I felt this morning. When I asked what to do next, she led me through the tapping exercise that is sending waves of relaxation through my body.

“You released a tremendous amount of energy, Audrey. Tapping will stimulate your lymphatic system to flush out the negativity. Keep it up for fifteen minutes at least, and don’t forget to—” Sandra’s faces freezes, then suddenly reanimates. “The signal’s terrible here. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Thanks, Sandra. Enjoy your—” The call is dropped. I close my eyes and continue tapping, breathing to the four-count dance of my slowing heartbeat.

My sadness is still with me, but it’s a simpler feeling now, detached from self-destructive thoughts. My guilt over leaving David on the sidewalk has eased, too, though that was far from my only regret. Somewhere in the middle of the night, my eyes and throat on fire from crying, I unearthed my deepest sorrow: that I’d missed my chance to give the man I married my whole heart. This morning, though, with the sun a bright circle in the winter sky, I ask myself a new question. How could I have given him my whole heart when the heart I had was in pieces? David might have helped stitch my beating, broken organ back together if only we’d had more time. Now I’ll never know.

I dress for the cold and walk down to the barn. On this first day of a new year, I offer the animals a Vulcan salute and earnestly bid them to live long and prosper. I pet the imperious cat, greet the indifferent sheep, and play stop-stealing-my-mittens with the mischievous goats. After topping off everyone’s feed, I hike out to the pasture and into the woods, following that strange line of wire through the trees. The quiet is pierced now and then by a hawk’s screech or a cardinal’s cheep. Down by the creek, water whispers like a secret beneath paper-thin sheets of ice. I stay awhile, blowing clouds of lung-warmed breath through lips pursed as if for a kiss.

There’s a rustle behind me. I turn to see a watchful doe, tan hide and white chest and black eyes all perfectly still. Other deer move into view behind her, necks bent to the ground, nervous lips searching for forgotten berries beneath the frost. Spellbound, I turn myself to stone. Flakes begin to swirl through bare tree branches. The metaphor of a snow globe comes to mind—clichéd, perhaps, but the exact image for the encapsulated perfection of this moment.

The doe starts and bounds away. The others dash after her. I hear it now, a far-off engine sawing through the silence. Spell broken, I traipse home through the flurry, annoyed at myself for never having posted the no trespassing signs Sam suggested to keep all-terrain vehicles from crossing my boundary.

I wish I could tell Sam about the deer I saw, but that bridge has surely been burned in the three months since I blew him off. Wren thinks I’m visiting my fictional friends in Vermont, which is what I tell Lucinda when she calls to wish me a happy New Year. I don’t like lying, but my embryonic sense of well-being demands I preserve my stealth existence a while longer. I’ve stocked up enough food—canned, jarred, bagged, and boxed—to yield a month’s worth of meals. I text both Lucinda and Wren that I’ve decided to extend my stay through the end of the month, that I’ll head home on the first of February, that they can stop worrying about me until then.

When the final touches in the kitchen are complete, I set the espresso machine on the soapstone counter like a crown jewel. I’m itching to update the bathroom next, but I’ve made a resolution to pay off my credit card once and for all before embarking on any more projects. It’s just as well, I think, cooking up my first hot meal in months that didn’t come out of a microwave. I’ve gotten past the point where demolition and renovation are the only things keeping my head above water. Winter’s darkest day is behind me. Each risen sun lingers in the sky a few minutes longer than the one before. Sap is gathering in the frozen maples, ready to run at the first sign of spring. I need to gather myself, too, if this year is to be different from the last.

I start each morning with tapping and breathing, followed by a hike through the woods. During the day, I prepare my spring-semester classes, attend virtual faculty meetings, wrestle my finances into shape before tax season catches me unprepared. Not wanting to live on the set of a home improvement show any longer, I reclaim the living room, banishing my tools to the workshop alongside David’s van. I bring in books from the barn by the armful, adding them one by one to my online store. I read classics in the evenings, reacquainting myself with Jane Eyre’s bravery, Fanny Price’s resolve, Dorothea Brooke’s idealism, Countess Olenska’s dignity. At night, I huddle in bed with my notebook, freely mixing remembered fact with wishful fiction as I overwrite traumatic memories with happier scenes.

The catastrophe of January sixth is terrifying, but I’m reassured by the courage of Congress snatching democracy back from the brink. When college classes commence, I’m surprised by how delighted I am to see my students’ faces appear on the screen. After watching the presidential inauguration come off without a hitch, I decide to take a mental health break from current events. I turn off alerts, delete the New York Times app, avoid online news sites.

I don’t hear about the atmospheric river moving east across the continent until I wake to snow falling so thick and fast, I feel the need to find out when it will end. I watch, mesmerized, as radar images loop across my phone’s screen, lurid colors swirling in a hypnotic spiral. Projected snowfall totals inch up and up and up the closer the weather system gets to Schuywich. I ought to back the van out of the workshop now before it’s socked in, run into the village for eggs and milk and bread before the snow gets too deep.