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"Yes!" Hester said back "But it wasn’t souage, Hester I’m just a little shocked" Dellarobia stoh the leaves, canvas bag rattling She threw the bag on the ground There was nothing breakable in there anyway She wished there had been She was in theinto a hundred pieces
"So I wasn’t good enough for your son Is that what you’re saying?"
"You know it isn’t" Hester’s voice had grown quiet She spoke straight out through the upright trunks of the bare grove as if having a prison visit with God
"Well, why, in the name ofWell, Jesus, Hester You never saw fit to mention this before? Like after we lost that baby? We could have called it quits right there after six weeks of ht I was so unsuitable"
"Wasn’tto that They’d just tried to do the right thing For the sake of Cub’s parents as e and continuous shushing sound in the leafless forest, under the lointer sky
"But I never made up a feather bed for you either," Hester said "If you noticed"
"Oh, I noticed" Dellarobia took off her gloves, fished a tissue out of her pocket, and blew her nose She contearettes and smoke the whole pack
"If you were going, you were going, I figured Taking those babies with you"
"Preston and Cordie?" Dellarobia turned to stare Could any of this be true? That Hester expected to lose them, all this tie vows herself, she and Bear, and thrown together that house before the ink was dry Built, though not paid for "You built us a house," she said
"It’s ed our son"
"And you think I’ve had one foot out the door All along"
"Have you not?"
"No!" Dellarobia drew the vowel out into two syllables as in, No, stupid Shenumb It was an earthquake, an upheaval of buried surfaces in which nothing was added or taken away Her family was still her fa like any other by turning the everyday blind eye But so
After they had their words, they could only keep walking The trail clie that divided the butterfly valley with its dank, loo hollow above Bear and Hester’s house The lay of the land was plain from up there, the patchwork of brown farray wall of rees, and it grew nearly too war inside layers of winter wool As they descended the south-facing incline, Dellarobia saw a glint of sun reflected off the steep tin roof of Bear and Hester’s farroves of these little trees that held on to their leaves for no good reason she could guess, except to rattle like worn-out lungs with any faint movement of air The woods possessed but one color, brown, to all appearances dead Yet each trunk rose up in its way distinct Shaggy bark and s for the sky, come what may Hester could have said what they were She was a fount of strange woodland nain’s bower, for which no person of their acquaintance seeht, to have anshose questions had all died of natural causes The trees were skinnier here and the woods ation of hus She knew this valley had been cleared of its ti her own ti she spied a flower and let out a small oh Hester must have seen it too, the sole speck of white in the winter-killed ed blossoet close, theimpulse, and saw each blossom was a whole cluster of petaled flowers Black specks danced on filareen leaves, only the floral bunches on naked pink steh matted dead leaves That looked eerie, like some posy handed over from the other side, froht there’d be ht be" Dellarobia was not about to dig this one up if it was the sole delegate She reh muscles to all the hours she’d spent in that posture as if in prayer or surrender, counting dead butterflies She feared taking her eyes off this one live thing It could disappear
"Moers Some of them says salt-and-pepper flower"
Dellarobia found it hard to ireed about, the name of a Cheerio-size flower that bloomed in the dead of February What would possess them to come out here and find it?
"I see more," Hester said Dellarobia re around the first one so as not to lose it, but Hester was right, there were more Salted across the dun floor of the woods she counted three, four, a dozen small bouquets Once her eyes kne to see the and dug into the dank forest floor, which et and gravelly just under the top inch of arden, the air stirred and in plain sight the experiment ran ahead of itself Monarchs were already here, this source discovered She sao bright drifters coasting tentatively in the woods, and near Hester’s boots, the duller orange of folded wings at rest on a flower cluster Nectaring, that was the verb King Billy nectaring on the harbinger
Beyond all half-answers and evasions one question had persisted, since forever, and it hy In Dellarobia’s childhood it plagued and compelled her, one word, like one silver dollar on the floor of a wishing well, begging to be plucked up but strategically untouchable Unsatisfactory answers crowded the waters around it, she could , because it was his time, because it isn’t done, because I didn’t raise you to behave that way, because it’s too late, because the baby came early, because life is like that, just because Because God , in mysterious ways