2

Adelaide has spent the afternoon walking to and from the river path, retrieving the largest branches she can carry. Any sane person would tear down the fence, invite the animals in to feast. But a life spent deep in the woods doesn’t exactly cultivate sanity, and a little bit of madness has served Adelaide well throughout the years. Far be it from her to stanch it now.

Adelaide stacks the branches side by side upon the ground, tying them together with old bits of fishing line salvaged from her storage shed. She longs for the warmth of the cabin. Her white skirt and sweater are drying by the fireplace, waiting for her, eager for the bottom of the river. Tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow.

Adelaide props the new gate against the wattle fence, securing it as best she can with the fishing line, and steps back to examine her handiwork. The branches are wobbly and don’t quite fit the opening, but they should hold.

Henry and the girls toddle toward her, pausing to admire her work. Zelda and Moffit peck around the gate, eager for any bugs that may have been disturbed.

A large, somber cloud, dense as a forest canopy, blocks the sun, cloaking Adelaide in shadow. Adelaide knows these clouds. Now that she’s paying attention, she can smell it in the air. How did she not notice earlier? Tonight, a storm is coming.

Adelaide cannot sleep. Perhaps it is the wind, or her rattling windows. Perhaps it is the pill bottle, beckoning from the shadows of the kitchen. She listens for evidence of her garden marauder pouncing on the last of her cantaloupes, but hears nothing through the whistling cyclone.

At times like these, the outside noise creates such a clamor that inner voices and memories surge forward, begging to be noticed. Faces of people she once knew, words spoken but never forgotten, time spent and wasted. But tonight, she thinks of something lovely. Beneath the floorboard in the living room—the one that pulls away from the nails—is a box. It is a box she usually tries to forget, and she doesn’t step on the board for fear of remembering, as the elicited emotions are hard to predict and impossible to prepare for. It’s a bit like a minefield and she never knows which step will detonate. But tonight, she summons the memory with ease, and there are no bombs.

Once, many years ago, there was a tall mirror by her bedroom door, and the wind through the open windows would rattle the frame against the wall. She sees herself, young, hair long and thickened by the hormones coursing through her veins. Standing before the mirror and parting the buttons of her dress until it falls from her shoulders, dangling from her hips. Watching her body in the reflection, as though she can witness its minute changes if only she can find the right angle. Running her hands over her growing womb and pressing on her navel, which had recently begun to bulge. Wrapping her arms around her belly, no longer alone.

Adelaide sits up and brings her stiff hands to her face. It seems as though tonight she has, in fact, detonated a bomb.

The tears flow through her fingers as she weeps. She tries not to think about the box under the floorboard that pulls away from the nails, where there is still a receiving blanket, and the frenzied drawings of a toddler. She tries not to think about the small knitted cap or the handwritten diary she kept during those nine long months. Or that awful note left on the living room table sixteen years later—the morning Adelaide awoke to an empty cabin, alone once again. And she tries not to think about the man—never think about the man. The stranger with those dark, bewitching eyes.

STOP!

Adelaide brushes away the last of her tears and listens to her ticking clock. She doesn’t know why she has kept it all these years. Adelaide tells time by the sun and the shadows. Perhaps she has kept it so that there is something else to listen to.

Adelaide peers out the bedroom window toward the coop, seeking a glimpse of her chickens through the storm, but it seems they did not make it to shelter in time. She spots Henry’s plum feathers just beyond the window frame, shivering beneath the eave of her cabin, and she pushes it open. Everything not too heavy to resist twists and sways in the wind. She listens for the mirror, but knows it is no longer there.

“Come on, Henry. Girls.”

The chickens jostle around one another to be the first to perch on the open window. Moffit is triumphant and Adelaide ushers her into the warm bed. Zelda follows, collapsing onto the covers.

Henry stares at Adelaide, cocking his head to one side and shaking water from his crown.

“Well, that didn’t do much good, did it? Get in here with us girls.”

After a moment of deliberation, Henry perches on the window ledge.

Adelaide slides under the blanket while Zelda and Moffit scurry to the foot of her bed to roost on the post. They preen themselves and tuck their fatigued faces between their shoulders.

Henry is content to remain on the ledge, immune to Adelaide’s insistent pats upon the mattress, so she pulls the rooster into her bed and latches the window closed.

Adelaide listens for evidence of her garden forager once the storm begins to slow, but sleep takes her quickly, and she believes it’s only a dream when the gate of branches comes tumbling down.