BY RACHEL FEDER
Editor’s Note: This is part of a serial novel, THE TURN, which will be published in installments at Luna Luna. This is Part 4. Read the rest here.
11.
I read and reread Jack’s message, cocooned under my comforter:
Fuck. Baxter, it’s not what you think. When can I see you?
I try to think of something to say. No way am I seeing him—Alison has strict pod protocols, plus I know Jack too well. He may be alone most of the time but there’s no way he’s gone all these months without bringing beautiful younger women back to the woods with him. The thought makes my stomach turn.a
I tuck my phone under my pillow and try to fall asleep. I don’t know how much time passes before I’m awakened by the soft, decided weight of a body landing on the bed.
“Baxter,” Quinn whispers, “it’s outside.”
“What’s outside?” I sit up, drowsy, touch her hair.
“The light. The light’s outside again.”
I push the curtains aside, and sure enough, there’s a small light moving across the yard. At least, it seems like it’s in the yard. I squint but I can’t make anything out.
“It looks like it’s right outside,” I tell Quinn, rubbing my eyes, “but it could be a headlamp out on the trail.”
“But why would somebody be hiking in the middle of the night?”
I shush her, shrug my shoulders, and draw the curtains. Walk her back upstairs, pour a cup of milk, and tuck her into bed.
Back downstairs, I step outside. The yard is empty, the light gone. Chill of autumn air across my cheek.
I crawl under the covers but I’m too rattled to fall asleep.
Around three in the morning I hear the front door open and close. I hear a car start.
12.
A fire has broken out due north of the house. I let the kids play in the yard while the smoke thickens, an amber pillar gathering in the distance. We’re just outside of the evacuation zone.
“Thank god,” Alison spits, slipping her hand into the back pocket of Seb’s Dockers. She doesn’t realize we have come inside.
After dinner, I sit on my bed watching ash fall in the yard and loading and reloading a map of the fire on my phone. Jack’s cabin is right in the middle of the action. Either he’s moved on, or he’s in danger.
I take a deep breath and text him. Are you OK?
Three blinking dots indicate that he’s composing a reply, but in the end, he doesn’t answer.
A knock at the door, firm. I open the door and Seb’s sapphire eyes catch mine. My breath catches in my throat despite myself. He pushes his sandy hair out of his eyes with a calloused hand, adjusts his tortoiseshell glasses.
“Alison is making brownie mix,” he says, his voice disconnected, eyes going soft on some focal point beyond me. I feel the tension dissipate. “She wants to know if you’re watching the debate with us.”
“I’ll come grab a brownie in a bit,” I say, and he’s already halfway up the stairs.
I pull my hair back, bite my lip, and text Jack again. Please, just tell me you’re safe. This time there’s no reply, not even the little dots.
Upstairs, the man in charge tells us the air is sparkling clean. We are reminded that hundreds of children have been separated from their parents, parents who cannot be found. The man who wants to be in charge calls this criminal.
Seb slides his arm around Alison, kisses the top of her head as she presses her temples. I’m behind the couch, leaning against the arch in the kitchen wall, eating the last bits of a brownie with my fingers, pressing the crumbs into one another to make bigger crumbs.
13.
I wake up with a start. I’ve slept in, and my arm is numb. Thebes’s head is pressed into it; he’s curled up against me. It’s funny—I don’t remember bringing him into my room.
Alison is phone banking at the dining room table, her computer open and her headphones in. She is trying to convince someone to vote for the man who wants to be in charge. She is saying things like “there was never any plan to reunite these kids with their parents” and “common decency” and “as a parent myself.” When I emerge, she winks at me.
“You two looked cozy,” she tells me quickly, then hops on her next call.
I set Thebes up in the highchair next to her, mix some rice cereal for him, and rush downstairs before Seb can see me without a bra on.
Back in my room, I pull the door tight, push back the curtains, open the window to let out a little of the stale air. I brush out my tangled hair and pull it into a bun, then peel off the pizza-print pajamas Jack bought me as a joke gift back when everything was different.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. I watch my own brow furrow, my hands moving to my abdomen. I look down at my body, then back in the mirror, then down again.
My belly and hip are mottled with bruises. There’s a scratch on my left breast, and dried blood shimmers like rust on my shoulder and clavicle.