4

When she returns to her cottage, Sarah finds the bed nicely made with fresh linens, a stack of towels and washrags waiting on top of the toilet. Gail has also left behind a jar of potpourri that has the whole place smelling of lavender and lemons, and the bathroom finally has toilet paper, which makes the space a lot more livable. It’s not as modern as her original cabin, but it smells a lot better, and it’s kind of nice, being away from the main drag. At least the punk photographer won’t be pointing a camera at her every time she steps outside. When she throws herself onto the creaky bed, she notices that the window looks past the trees and out on the corner of the old resort and the wild mountain beyond. There’s a misty, hidden quality to the scene, a blurriness that reminds her of old impressionist paintings.

Her fingers twitch for social media, for that pleasant, slot-machine call of scrolling. Somewhere, a baby wombat is getting weighed in a mixing bowl, and a rescue kitten is having a name reveal, and a high school friend is thanking Jesus for the new Chick-fil-A milkshake flavor, and Sarah is missing it all. She tells her brain to calm down and relax; her brain tells her to find a button and click it. She stares at the water-spotted ceiling and thinks about how human beings were meant to walk five miles a day while eating fruit, to float in the ocean, to tell stories around a roaring fire, and yet we’ve built ourselves a magnificent cage that bores us so badly that most people would choose a mild shock over sitting patiently in an empty room, alone for more than two minutes.

She will find stillness, she tells herself firmly, because it has already found her. She will find stillness because that’s why she chose this particular place. The frustration is a feature, not a bug. It’s withdrawal. It’s detox. It’s medicine.

At six, the dinner bell rings, and Sarah waits a few minutes before locking her door and heading up to December House. She’d rather walk into the café and scope out her fellow artists than have some stiff and bumbling half-conversation on the way there. Far ahead, she can see the bell-shaped silhouette of Gertrude Rose and imagines that she might’ve been one of the original visitors to the resort. It’s got to be hard to pee under all those skirts; does she have to loop them over the toilet like an igloo? And how did the woman ever fit in her car for the journey up here? Surely she didn’t take a horse and buggy. Sarah would love the answers to all her questions about the costumer, but not if it involves asking her directly.

This time when she opens the door, she’s met with an acrid, smoky smell. Whatever lovely apple treat Bridget was making earlier must’ve been in the oven too long. The scent does not raise the appetite, and she almost thinks about heading back to her room for a protein bar or one of the packs of chips she brought along, just in case the food was terrible.

Too late. Gail is waving her over to the buffet, where the other artists are already awkwardly jostling for food. Reid gives her a small wave and a smile, while Gertrude Rose bobs her head. She’s removed a front panel of her dress; it once buttoned high up her neck, but now her freckled cleavage has been unmasked. Sarah takes a plate and gets in line. She scoops up salad, salmon patties, quinoa, and veggies but skips the charred dinner rolls, grateful that it wasn’t the dessert that went down in flames. Bridget is nowhere to be seen, but angry clanks from the other side of the wooden door to the kitchen suggest she’s in there and still in a bad mood.

As the last person getting food and filling her water glass from a pitcher, Sarah is worried that she’s doomed herself to a sort of middle school cafeteria situation, but Gail has pushed two tables together and there’s just one seat left. To her annoyance, Sarah is stuck between Reid and the aggressively rude photographer.

“Welcome to Tranquil Falls,” Gail says as everyone fumbles with their forks, food halfway to their mouths. “As you all know, I’m Gail, and I’ve been running this program since my parents retired. We like to do a quick introduction, just so everyone knows names.” Gail is at the head of the table, and she nods to the person sitting to her left. He looks like he’s maybe seventeen, a tall, gangly Asian kid who’s mostly elbows and Adam’s apple with a crop of shaggy black hair. He drops his fork and looks like he’d prefer to crawl under the table rather than have the spotlight turned on him.

“Uh, I’m Lucas.” He swallows hard and picks up his fork again.

“And what’s your medium?” Gail prompts like she’s his mom.

“Violin, viola, piano, banjo—”

Ah. He must’ve been the one Sarah heard playing earlier.

“Music,” Gail finishes for him, as if this wasn’t obvious. “Next?”

“Gertrude Rose. Costumer, anachronist, steampunk enthusiast, and fiber artist.”

After that, they just keep going before Gail can interrupt again. It’s always odd when someone who looks that artsy and free is a type-A tight-ass.

“Reid. Metalwork.”

“Sarah. Pottery on the wheel.”

She’s immediately grateful that she’s managed to get the words out without sounding like an idiot. Public speaking has never been a forte, and Kyle always said—

Well, who gives a shit about what Kyle said?

“Ingrid. Photography and darkroom.”

That’s everyone Sarah has met before. The next three people are new.

One is a Black woman in her sixties, thin and elegant with her white-streaked hair in a high braided bun. She’s wearing a long velvet dress with a floor-length embroidered duster and big glasses that give her bug eyes, with a collection of tangled necklaces hanging heavy around her neck.

“Antoinette,” she says, her voice deep and husky. “Calligraphy and inks.”

The next person is a man in his sixties, white with an alcoholic’s red nose and wild gray Einstein hair, a gold cross necklace, and a black T-shirt that reads Does Not Play Well with Others stretched over his potbelly. “Bernie. Handbuilding and sculpture.” He’s got that kind of smirking know-it-all vibe, and Sarah instantly dislikes him—which does not bode well, as they’ll be sharing the studio.

The last person is a white woman a little older than Sarah but trying not to look it, wearing a plaid shirt, skinny jeans, and cowboy boots. Her blond hair is pulled back into the kind of high, messy bun that you can watch tutorials for fifteen times on TikTok and still have no idea how it works. She’s one of those people who just looks effortless—which Sarah knows requires a lot of effort. “I’m Kim. I do stained glass,” she says.

“So that’s everyone.” Gail sits back down. “We’ll have a bonfire tonight after dinner so you can all get to know one another and enjoy some s’mores. Beer and wine for everyone except Lucas, obviously.” He scrunches down in his seat and looks like he wishes he could melt directly into the floor. “After that, you’re all basically on your own until the final exhibition. Come see me in the front office if you need anything. And we’ll have meals together, of course, so you can find me here, too. I hope you’ll all have a wonderful autumn and enjoy the natural beauty of the campus.” When no one says anything, she adds, “Well, dig in!”

Sarah is hungry, and the food is unexpectedly good. The conversation, however, is balky and uncomfortable. There doesn’t appear to be a take-charge extrovert among them—they are artists who purposefully sought this lonesome aerie, after all. Gail attempts an icebreaker here or there, but she can’t seem to drop her air of authority; it’s like trying to talk to the high school principal when he’s sitting backward on his chair and using the word tubular. She mainly focuses on Lucas, who squirms under her scrutiny. Reid finally takes pity on the kid and starts up a conversation about Marvel movies, and Gail zeroes in on Ingrid, who gives flat, sarcastic, one-syllable answers. Sarah hates it when Ingrid’s attitude is aimed at her but kind of loves it when it’s aimed at someone else.

“You seemed different in your application essay,” Gail says wistfully.

“Everyone is different when they want something,” Ingrid replies as she pokes at her salmon cake.

With Ingrid obviously uninterested in playing nice and Reid now animatedly discussing Star Wars with Lucas, there’s not really anyone for Sarah to talk to. Kim gives her a shy smile from across the table, but Gertrude Rose is yammering at her about how messy buns used to be done with rats made from the hair of paupers, so she can’t really chat. Antoinette eats silently, carefully, staring straight ahead like she’s watching a TV no one else can see. Bernie is holding court with Gail, talking about his days as a college professor. Gail softens around him, is less uptight. When she laughs, it’s startlingly loud and braying. Sarah hopes every meal won’t be this cumbersome.

Finally, everyone is done, and they bus their plates and scrape off their scraps.

“Going to the bonfire?” Reid asks.

Sarah nods. “Definitely. She promised s’mores.”

The group walks out to the edge of the forest, where Gail’s husband—Sarah has already forgotten his name but knows it starts with a G and is tempted to call him Gandalf—is stacking wood in the center of a circle of stones. Logs and old patio chairs are placed in a ring just far enough away to keep people from catching on fire. There’s exactly one bag of marshmallows, a large off-brand chocolate bar, and an open box of graham crackers, plus a beat-up cooler full of cheap beer, tiny wine bottles, and hard seltzer. Sarah hasn’t had a drink in a while—over the past year, she’s had insanely bad hangovers and lots of headaches and nausea in general, it’s a whole thing that she’s attributed to stress—but she knows she’s going to need any help the alcohol can offer if she’s going to loosen up enough to make friends. It’s almost like she’s forgotten how. She digs up a black cherry seltzer and wipes the condensation off on her jeans.

“None for you, young sir,” Gertrude Rose says, pointing a gloved finger in Lucas’s face. “We know you’re not of legal drinking age.”

Lucas looks like he wants to run away. “I wasn’t going to—I mean, I don’t—”

“Oh, c’mon. He’s nowhere near the cooler,” Reid says, clapping the kid on the back. “And it’s not like he’s going to be driving.”

But Gertrude Rose settles into the chair nearest the cooler like a broody hen and crosses her arms as if daring Lucas to fight her for the opportunity to drink lukewarm beer with a bunch of old people. He heads for the s’mores instead.

Sarah takes a seat across the fire, as far from Gertrude Rose as possible, and Kim points at the seat beside her with a lime seltzer. “Is anyone sitting here?” she asks.

“Nope, go ahead.”

Kim settles in and sips, the fire dancing in her eyes. “This is not what I thought it would be like, you know? I guess I thought it would be people—”

“More like us?” Sarah ventures.

Kim grins. “Yeah. I guess I forget every artist isn’t an Instagram mom. I thought it would look like a yoga retreat.”

They watch as Lucas and Reid make s’mores using long forks left by the cooler while Bernie gives them unnecessary and unwanted pointers. Sarah is tempted to join them but still feels full after the apple buckle, and her goal is to leave the bonfire without any regrets, without saying something stupid or talking too much or accidentally insulting someone. For the past five years, every time she and Kyle went to a party or mixer with his friends or hospital colleagues, she always did something wrong…sometimes a lot of somethings. And Kyle always gently, kindly, seemingly benevolently told her about it once they were in the car. Eventually, he just stopped taking her along. Even if she’s come to realize that he was a grade-A asshole who was just trying to erode her self-esteem in a way she couldn’t quite pin down in the moment, she can’t help feeling like she’s walking through a minefield now in social situations. She’s too loud, too flaky, too immature, doesn’t know when to shut up—that’s what the voice in her head tells her. The damage has left scars.

“So what brought you here?” Kim asks, her eyes on the fire.

Sarah sips her seltzer, welcomes the warmth creeping up her spine as she starts to relax for the first time in years. “I’m a few courses shy of a degree in ceramics,” she says. “I dropped out of school to move across the country with my boyfriend for his residency. We—just broke up. So I thought I could get back into it, maybe get back on track here and then finish up those last credits.” Her next sip is a gulp, and the bubbles make her cough and feel like an idiot, but Kim doesn’t seem to notice.

“I hear that. That’s a really great goal. Did you miss it? The art, I mean. Or did you, like, take classes at a local place, or have a home studio?”

Regret peals like a gong in Sarah’s chest as she shakes her head. “I missed it, but I told myself I had better things to do. I mean, my boyfriend told me I did. And home studios are so messy. It’s all just dirt, right? I always knew I could go back to it, that it would wait for me.” She holds up the hand that isn’t clutching the seltzer for dear life, opens it and closes it in front of the dancing flames. “But I missed the feel of the clay, you know? The possibility of it.” She realizes she’s been doing most of the talking and asks, “How about you? Why are you here? Or, I mean, what brought you here?”

Because Why are you here? is a pretty harsh question.

Kim scoots back, puts her boots up on the chair, and hugs her knees. “I took a class last year and really liked it. Stained glass. I mean, I’ve taken a lot of classes.” She leans over, her head flopping toward Sarah like they’re ten and at a sleepover. “A. Lot. Watercolor, enameling, polymer clay, crochet. Like I was searching for something. And then I found stained glass, and I started following stained-glass artists on Instagram and TikTok, and I realized that it could be a business. I need to make money. My husband…”

She looks down and sniffles.

“He’s trying to take the kids. He cheated on me, and now he’s trying to take the kids even though he hates them and is just going to farm them out to a nanny he can bang, but I don’t have a degree and I really need the money. The essential oils just aren’t enough, so I want to make these suncatchers with a little pad that holds essential oil to make everything smell nice. I can’t find anyone else doing it, which means it’s a good idea, right?” Sarah nods, as that’s what she’s expected to do. “So I figure I have the studio to myself, all that space, and I just turn into a production machine.”

That sounds like some version of hell to Sarah, just churning out the same exact piece of art over and over and over, but there’s no way she’s going to say that. Throwing on the wheel might seem repetitive, but it’s the minor variations that make each piece fascinating to her. At least Kim has a plan, and it sounds like she’s willing to do the work. For all the pain Kyle has put Sarah through, she’s glad there aren’t any kids to fight over. She may have almost nothing—just a little nest egg her nana left her in her will—but she doesn’t have to pay for a fight. As soon as this artist residency is over, the lease starts on her new rental in Athens, which is half a world away from Kyle and all her memories back in Colorado.

“So do you make mugs, bowls, that sort of thing?” Kim asks as she rubs the smoke from her eyes, trying to get back on track.

“All that. Mugs, bowls, plates, teapots, pitchers. I need to get my skills back and then figure out what I really want to concentrate on here.”

Kim nods, but she’s watching Reid and Lucas at the fire. “And he’s a sculptor. The hot one. Isn’t his studio right next to yours?” She waggles her perfect eyebrows.

Sarah blushes. “Yeah, looks like it. But I’m not—I’m just getting out of a bad relationship. I didn’t come here for…that.”

Kim shrugs. “It doesn’t have to be a relationship. It can just be what it is. Things happen. I’ve seen Ghost.”

She slams her boots on the ground and mimes throwing a pot and hums “Unchained Melody,” and Sarah honks a laugh, a real laugh, the kind of laugh Kyle told her sounded immature and embarrassing and crazy. She hasn’t laughed like that in ages, and it feels daring and free. Kim laughs, too, and Sarah’s heart wrenches when she realizes how long it’s been since she had female friends—since she was allowed to have female friends. She used to have a crew from her hometown, and she was tight with her roommates from college, but then she moved to be with Kyle and he slowly expanded until there wasn’t room for anyone else in her life. He said Jill was too needy, Allie was a bad influence, Katerina was so negative. And so she drifted away from them, just so she wouldn’t have to hear him complain about them.

But now, all the way across the country? She can be herself. She can make friends. She can laugh her big, stupid donkey laugh without feeling guilty. She can look at Reid, if she wants to. She can do anything. That’s why she’s here.

Kim leans in closer, grinning. “So I don’t mean to be catty, but they’re both nuts, right?” She inclines her head toward where Gertrude Rose sits beside Antoinette. The two older women are chatting animatedly. The beer looks odd in Gertrude Rose’s hand, surrounded by cream-colored lace and the thick tartan fabric. Antoinette is sipping from a brass flask that winks in the firelight.

“They’re artists, which means they’re probably going to be eccentric. Maybe you just stop giving a shit when you hit fifty. It sounds kind of nice, actually,” Sarah says, finding her tongue loosened by the seltzer. She turns the can upside down and swallows the last drops. Kim goes over to the cooler, briefly converses with Gertrude Rose and Antoinette, grabs two more cans, and returns.

“They asked me my astrology sign. Can you believe that? This place is a trip.” Kim hands over one of the cans and pops her own. “I’m an Aries. Antoinette said that was obvious.” With an eye roll, she clinks her can against Sarah’s and drinks. “So what happened with your boyfriend?”

Sarah has never discussed this with anyone else, other than the Reddit thread she started with a throwaway account, the one that convinced her she was being massively gaslit and was living in a world full of marinara-red flags. The whole thing makes her feel like an absolute fool, that she fell for Kyle’s bullshit and stayed with him for six years and even let him convince her to leave everything behind and move to Colorado with him. But she wants to talk about it—wants to squeeze out the rest of the pus, now that the wound is gaping open. Plus, it only feels fair, since Kim told her the truth about why she’s here.

“It wasn’t good,” she starts. “We met at a coffee shop in college, when I was a junior and he was finishing med school. He love-bombed me—I’d never felt so taken care of in my whole life. Two dozen roses, concert tickets, fancy dinners. He convinced me to move to Colorado with him for his residency, and I thought it was so fun and romantic, and I’d lived in Georgia all my life. So I didn’t finish my degree, I just went. I knew no one out there, and the only job I could get was as a secretary.” She chews her lip, remembering how lonely it was. “I thought things were okay, but I could never tell if he was going to be sweet and loving or mean and cutting. Whenever I was sick, he was so tender, but whenever I wanted to go out or take a class or go to the gym, he was dismissive and belittling, you know? It was like walking on eggshells all the time. Then I realized I was depressed, and I told him so, and instead of trying to help me, he told me I was being melodramatic to get attention. I realized he was gaslighting me. And I wrote down everything that was bothering me and realized I was in an emotionally abusive situation. So I quit my crappy job and got out.”

She doesn’t mention all the strange things that happened, the way she couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t, the stomachaches and nausea Kyle ascribed to anxiety, the pills he gave her for the anxiety that didn’t make her any less anxious. When she thinks about it, the shame makes her gorge rise.

She’s smarter than that. Or she thought she was.

“Narcissists,” she says with a shake of her head.

“Tell me about it,” Kim agrees. “I married one, too. Except mine didn’t really care about me at all. Not, like, as a person. He married me, got me pregnant, and then completely ignored me to chase teenagers. I was just a tick box. Pass the bar? Check. Blond trophy wife? Check. Two kids, a big house, a Porsche? Check. And when I called him on it and decided to leave, he told me it wouldn’t look good at the firm and that if I didn’t settle down and behave and be a good wife, he’d ruin my life.” She takes a big swig of her seltzer. “And he is.”

“Shit,” Sarah murmurs.

For a long moment, they drink and stare into the fire. Then Kim pulls out her big purse and digs around, producing a little notepad and a couple of hotel pens. “Look, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to write down what we want to leave behind in our old lives, and then we’re going to throw it in the fire and release that energy into the universe. I did this at a retreat once. You down?”

It feels a little silly, but it also sounds like fun. Sarah never really got into the spiritual side of art, the kind that’s in tune with the moon and tides and calls down the Muse with a capital M, but what she’s been doing isn’t working, so why the hell not? The whole reason she’s here is to shed her old life like sunburned skin and start over. She already made her offering to the pool, so releasing energy into the fire isn’t such a stretch.

“Let’s do it,” she says.

Kim tears off a sheet and hands her the pen, and Sarah puts up her knee and thinks a moment before scribbling, I want to leave behind Kyle and everything he did to diminish me. And under that, she adds, I want to discover who I really am.

She looks up as Kim finishes writing her own message and folds up the paper. She catches that asshole in loopy cursive and doesn’t blame the other woman a bit.

“Ready?” Kim asks.

Sarah nods and stands, and they approach the fire.

“I release this into the universe,” Kim says, tossing the paper to flutter into the fire. It catches and curls, going black amid the dancing flames.

“Uh, yep,” Sarah agrees. She can’t bring herself to say those words. It’s just too cheesy. “I release it.” She tosses in her paper and watches it burn until there’s nothing left. It might be hokey, but it feels good, and she takes a deep breath all the way down to her belly.

“There we go,” Kim says. “A fresh start. Cheers!”

They clink their cans, and then Kim has to have a s’more, so they join Reid and Lucas to share the two marshmallow-roasting sticks.

“What’ve you guys been talking about?” Kim asks, and Sarah is glad to be adopted by the closest thing around to an extrovert, because she’s always sucked at small talk.

“TV and videogames, mostly,” Reid says. “And our cabins. Although mine is more of a tree house. What about you?”

“I’m in the castle one,” Kim says. “Bluebird House. It’s gorgeous. The whole inside has a fairy-tale theme. It’s perfect.”

“Mine is like a Hobbit house,” Lucas says quietly. “It’s called the Goose Hut. The one with the round door?”

Kim nods. “I saw that. It looked a little stuffy.”

“I kind of like stuffy,” Lucas manages to say. “Our apartment back home is…I mean I’m grateful for it, but it’s really…cold. Concrete and steel. This is better.”

It’s the most Sarah has heard him say so far, and his whole face is flushed, and then she notices that the pockets of his cargo pants contain lumps about the size and shape of tiny wine bottles. She’s not going to say anything, though—what trouble can a drunk teen get into up here?

“Which cabin are you in?” Reid asks her.

“Oh, I was supposed to be in Cardinal House, but like I said, there was that dead possum in there, so Gail moved me out to—well, it doesn’t have a name. It looks like the witch’s cottage from Hansel and Gretel. It’s old and neglected, but at least it doesn’t stink.”

“Candy Cottage!” Kim squeals. “That’s what we’ll call it. It’s weird that it doesn’t have a name, though.”

Sarah shrugs. “I guess they just don’t use it anymore. It’ll be fine. I’m here for the art, not the room.”

“The cabins are so far away,” Lucas says, squirming a little.

Kim looks down at his pockets and smirks. “Pretty far to the outhouse, huh?”

“That’s why God made trees,” Reid says. “Your phone has a flashlight, so just go twenty feet in and take care of business. Unless you want to run back to December House and talk to Gail.”

Lucas covers his mouth as he burps. “Uh, woods are fine.”

He turns on his phone’s flashlight and stumbles into the nearest patch of trees. Sarah watches him go for a moment before remembering that it’s rude to watch people on their way to piss in the forest.

“He’s a good kid,” Reid says. “Fucked-up family, though. He told me—”

A scream from the woods interrupts him, and he takes off running with Sarah and Kim hot on his heels.