by Amy Engel
“He knew?”
Bishop nods. “I finally told my dad either the guard would have to shoot me or I was going. He didn’t try to stop me after that. Told the guard to let me leave.” Bishop runs his hand down my arm, entwines our fingers. “He said he remembered what it was like to be in love.”
“He said that?” I ask, surprised. It’s hard for me to imagine President Lattimer being so open with his feelings.
“He was drunk.” Bishop shakes his head slightly. “I’d never seen him like that before. I think he was finally admitting to himself that maybe he made a mistake all those years ago, not marrying your mother. That’s how he’s lived with it all this time. Telling himself he did the right thing.”
“We wouldn’t be here if he’d married her,” I say. It’s funny, when Bishop’s father told me the story of my mother I’d thought he’d been a fool to let her go. But Callie and I would never have been born if he had. Bishop wouldn’t exist. My mother would probably still be alive, but she wouldn’t be my mother.
“No,” Bishop says. “We wouldn’t.” He lifts my hair with one hand, uses the other to trace patterns on the back of my neck. It’s like he’s painting me with his hands, outlining every part of me. We have both gotten so much better at touching.
“I’ve been angry with her,” I admit. “With my mother. Ever since I learned the truth about her suicide. Angry that she left me. That she didn’t love me enough to stay.” Bishop doesn’t say anything, just skims his hands down my back, fingers bumping over my spine. “But I’m trying to forgive her.”
“She was so young,” Bishop says. “And her heart was broken.”
I nod. It’s easy for me to forget sometimes that she was only nineteen when she died. Not much older than me. With two children already and a husband she didn’t love. And the man she did love right there in front of her. Close enough to see but never have. The pain of it must have been unbearable. If it were me in her place, with Bishop just out of reach, I don’t know how I would stand it.
“Maybe you and I are their second chance,” I say, my own hands falling to rest on his stomach. “Your dad’s and my mom’s. Or does that sound stupid?”
Bishop shakes his head, pulls me closer with one warm hand around my waist. “Not stupid,” he whispers against my mouth.
I wonder if my mother would approve of Bishop and me? Of her daughter giving her heart to the son of the man who broke her own? I like to think she would. Glad at least that President Lattimer’s son had the courage to fight for what he wanted, that her own daughter had the strength to endure. Maybe the best way Bishop and I can honor the love between our parents is to try to rewrite a different ending to their story.
For the last few days I’ve been pretty sure that Bishop and Ash are up to something. Probably Caleb, too, although he’s not quite as obvious. Every time I walk into a room, Bishop and Ash stop talking, their voices trailing off and quick glances passing back and forth between them. When I ask what’s going on, they both look at me full of mock confusion and deny everything. And tonight cemented my suspicions, when Caleb invited me along with him to go pick something up from a friend of his. All four of us are already feeling the effects of an early winter, stir-crazy at being cooped up together for so many hours a day. Especially Caleb. So there’s no way he’d pass up a chance to run an errand alone unless Bishop and Ash asked him to get me out of the house.
“Where are we going?” I ask Caleb as we trudge down the street. It hasn’t snowed yet, but I can taste moisture in the air, the sky hanging so low and heavy I swear I can feel clouds pressing against the top of my head.
“I need to pick something up,” Caleb says.
“Are you going to be more specific?”
Caleb glances at me. “Nope.”
“Right,” I say with a sigh. “Of course not.” I may live in the same house with Caleb now, he may trust me in a way he didn’t before, but he’s still not someone who opens up. Getting him to talk sometimes feels like trying to pry open a locked vault with my fingernails. “Well, can you at least tell me what Bishop and Ash are up to?”
This time Caleb doesn’t bother looking at me. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The whispering? The weird looks? Any of this ringing a bell?”
Caleb turns left when we reach the center of town, down a short street with only a couple of intact houses. “I don’t think they’re up to anything,” he says. From the tone of his voice I know I’m not getting anything more out of him.
“Fine.” I sigh and follow him up the short walk to a house that looks precariously close to toppling over to one side. “Who lives here?” I ask.
“Andrew,” Caleb says. “Have you met him?”
“Yeah, once or twice.” I don’t know Andrew well, but I remember him from when we were camped near the river. He was usually working in the garden, harvesting vegetables and hauling baskets of them for canning.
The front door opens before we knock and Andrew steps out, a large box in his hands. “Got it all ready for you,” he says to Caleb. He looks over Caleb’s shoulder and grins at me. “Enjoy! But be careful with it!”
“Umm…okay,” I say with a confused look that only makes Andrew smile wider.
The box is big and unwieldy, but Caleb carries it with ease. My curiosity is killing me, but I don’t bother asking what’s inside. I already know Caleb won’t tell me, and I’m not giving him the satisfaction of refusing my request.
When we get back, Caleb opens the front door and pushes it wide, motions for me to go in ahead of him. Bishop and Ash are standing in front of the roaring fireplace in the living room.
I’ve barely cleared the doorway when Ash cries, “Happy birthday!” flinging her arms outward. There’s a small loaf of dark bread on the table between the couches and next to it what looks like a present, wrapped in printed cloth and tied with a fabric bow.
My eyes fly to Bishop, who is smiling. “Happy birthday, Ivy,” he says.
“What?” I say, a grin sliding onto my face. “Is it even my birthday?” I know we’re well into November now, but I don’t know the exact date. It’s almost impossible to keep track, and Caleb and Ash never seem that worried about the day on a calendar. They live by the seasons, the temperature in the air, and the leaves on the trees.
Bishop shrugs. “Right month. I figure we’re close enough.”
Ash sinks down and kneels in front of the table, pulls a handful of something small from a sack. “We even have birthday candles,” she says, delighted. “I traded a rabbit for them. Elizabeth Granger made them special.”
Behind me, Caleb has shut the front door, set the box on the floor. I turn and look at him. He’s not smiling, not exactly, but his eyes are bright. “Hey,” I say, “I thought you said you didn’t do birthday cake and candles out here.”
“We don’t,” Caleb says, moving up beside me. “But some besotted fool”—he tilts his head toward Bishop—“assured me this is how birthdays are properly celebrated. Even if it’s bread instead of cake.” Now he does smile at me, quick and warm. “Happy birthday.”
“Thank you,” I say, hit with a sudden flash of shyness, not sure where to look with everyone staring at me, unsure what to do.
Caleb gives me a gentle shove. “Get over there, before Ash works herself into a fit.”
“Ha ha,” Ash says, “very funny.” She’s stuck the candles into the bread and lit them, little droplets of wax already beginning to run down their sides. “We have to sing fast,” she says with a laugh.
“We’re singing?” Caleb groans.
Ash shoots him a look. “Yes. We’re definitely singing.”
Bishop wraps his arms around me from behind, his chest vibrating against me as he sings. Ash stands in front of me holding the bread, her grin big enough to split her face in two. And despite his protests, Caleb is right there next to her, singing loud and slightly off-key.
“Make a wish,” Bishop says as I lean forward to blow out th
e candles.
This. I wish for exactly this. This is more than I ever thought I’d have. It seems greedy to wish for anything more. But there is more. The apple bread. A new-to-me coat, thick and warm with only a few mismatched patches in the wool. And, just when I think the surprises are over, from the box by the door Caleb lifts an ancient phonograph.
I laugh at the sight of it. I’ve never seen one in real life, only in the pages of book, and to have one appear here, of all places, seems like a kind of magic. Like Caleb has snapped his fingers and pulled a rabbit from a hat.
“It’s Andrew’s most prized possession,” Caleb says. “So if we break it, he will kill us.”
“He hides it in the summer when we’re not here,” Ash says with a roll of her eyes.
“Why did he lend it to us?” I ask.
Caleb glances at Bishop. “The besotted fool struck again. Traded him a deer for it.”
I round on Bishop, eyes huge. “A whole deer?” I practically screech.
Bishop holds up both hands, laughing. “It wasn’t one of ours. I took a separate hunting trip.”
“Was that where you were last week? That day you disappeared?”
He nods.
“You shouldn’t have given him a whole deer,” I say. “That was too much. We—”
“Shhh,” Bishop says, stepping into my body, which is pretty effective at shorting out my brain and quieting my protests. “No worrying on your birthday.”
Ash is already shifting through the metal cylinders that accompanied the phonograph. “How do we know what’s on these?” she asks Caleb.
He shrugs. “We don’t. Just pop one on and see.”
Ash grabs a cylinder at random and puts it in the phonograph, winds up the handle with careful hands. The music that pours out is scratchy, the voice of the man singing tinny and indistinct. But it’s music all the same, and the sound reverberates around our small living room, bouncing off each one of us, hitting ears and skin and pushing smiles onto all our faces.
“Let’s dance!” Ash says, her sock-clad feet already shimmying across the floor.
Caleb flops down on one of the sofas. “Not happening. This is where I draw the birthday line. There is no way I am dancing.”
“I’m with him on this one,” Bishop says, hooking a thumb toward Caleb.
Ash sticks her tongue out at them and grabs my hand, pulls me into the empty space between the front door and the kitchen. We dance like fools, like children, swinging each other back and forth, spinning under each other’s arms and giggling, high pitched and ridiculous. We replace each cylinder with a new one when the song is done. Caleb and Bishop watch us, laughing when Ash slips and falls, clapping when we take our final bows, our cheeks flushed and sweat beading our brows. For those few minutes we are not facing a long, uncertain winter. We are not dreading the dreary days ahead. We have not lost anyone we love. We are young and we are simply and completely happy.
We end the evening sitting quietly in front of the fire, listening to the cylinder spin one last song out into the golden air. Relaxed there, Bishop at my back, the firelight in front of me, the remains of my birthday bread on the table scenting the air with spice, I can feel the changes inside myself. I knew that beyond the fence I would have to become tougher, and those hard edges have been easier to accept than I thought they might. I’ll never be Callie; I would never want to be. But I’m comfortable with the heft of a knife in my hand. Some part of me enjoys the backbreaking work it takes to survive each and every day. But there are also spaces inside me that are softer than they’ve ever been, spots that are now filled with warmth and joy—the sound of Ash’s laugh, Bishop’s hands on my face, the pure kindness of tonight.
Callie once told me that no revolutions are won without sacrifices, and she was right. She may have been talking about literal war, but the sentiment applies just as well to what’s happening within me. I’ve lost so much, but I’ve gained something, too. Life beyond the fence is transforming me. Not into a new person, but back into the girl I’ve always been underneath all the layers my father and Callie built on top of me. Slowly, I am finding myself.
I am becoming Ivy again.
Later, Bishop and I are curled up in bed, the covers practically over our heads to keep out the cold. I kiss my way down the side of his jaw, the column of his neck. “Besotted fool, huh?” I whisper near his ear, unable to keep the laughter out of my voice.
Bishop groans. “I was hoping you forgot that part.”
“Nope, no such luck.”
He rolls me onto my back, slides his body over mine. I try to keep my eyes open, but they flutter shut, the firm weight of him sucking the air from my lungs.
“I take exception with the fool part,” he says, his lips on my neck this time, moving lower. He bites down gently on my shoulder. “But besotted? Yeah, that sounds about right.”
Chapter Thirteen
The strangers arrive with the first winter storm. Ice fell most of the night, tapping against the sides of the house, and even with a fire in our bedroom fireplace and Bishop wrapped around me under our pile of blankets, I wake up shivering. Bishop gets up first, stokes the fire, and ventures downstairs to bring me a warm cup of tea. The rest of the house is quiet, and I suspect Caleb and Ash are taking advantage of the weather to stay snug in their beds as well.
When Bishop returns with my tea, I sit up in bed to drink it, still shrouded in blankets. I’m dreading the moment my feet will hit the frigid floorboards, cold seeping through my socks and numbing my toes in seconds.
“Your nose is pink,” Bishop tells me with a smile.
I press a palm to my nose, the tip of it icy against my skin. “I need to put the blankets over my head, I guess.”
Bishop laughs, his own cheeks flushed from the morning cold. He pulls back the thick curtain over our bedroom window and peers out. “It’s changed over to snow now,” he says.
“Coming down hard?”
“Pretty hard.”
I sigh. Caleb was right about winter hitting brutal and fast this year. I try to ignore the little bubble of fear in my stomach, the voice in my head that is constantly calculating how much food we have, how many months the cold will last, wondering which will run out first. Winters were bad in Westfall, too, but there I wasn’t responsible for feeding myself. There were plenty of winters where food was scarce, where we ate oatmeal or jerky for meal after meal. But somehow I always took for granted that there would be something to eat. Now, beyond the fence, with the wind howling around the eaves of the house and snow piling up against its sides, starvation feels like a very real possibility two or three months in the future.
“Hey,” Bishop says softly, drawing me out of my own head. “It’s going to be okay.” He crosses the room and sits down beside me on the bed, wraps his hands around mine on my mug. “We’re going to be okay. Caleb and Ash know what they’re doing. This isn’t their first winter out here.”
I nod. And he’s right; I trust Caleb and Ash with my life. But I’ve already caught Caleb twice running his hands over the packets of jerky, counting the jars of pickled vegetables in the kitchen cabinets. “But maybe when this storm clears we can set some more snares,” I say. “Just to be safe.”
Bishop smiles. “Definitely.” He takes the mug of tea from my hands and sets it on our bedside table. “But right now, it’s too cold to get out of this bed.” He lifts the covers and slides in next to me, pulls me down to lie beside him.
I tuck my face into the warmth of his neck, his stubble scratching against my cheek. “What did you have in mind?” I ask, already short of breath. I keep waiting for the day he doesn’t have this instant effect on me, my stomach rolling over, my heart racing, my limbs gone limp and languid.
His hands skim down my sides, work their way back up. “Something warm,” he says.
“Yes,” I breathe out. “Warm sounds good.”
Bishop laughs against my neck, causing a whole different kind of shivering. “Ivy?” he whispers.
“Hmmm?”
“Are you happy?”
It takes me a long time to answer. I find I’m reluctant to say the word out loud. Happiness is an emotion I don’t fully trust yet. Like love, it’s something I have to learn. Feeling it isn’t enough. I nod finally, say “yes” in a voice that’s lower than a whisper, and even then I feel like I’m tempting fate.
I should have known it could never last.
The day passes in the way I suspect many of our winter days will, the four of us sticking close to the big fireplace in the living room, trying to keep busy with card games and small chores. Things we can accomplish with blankets wrapped around our legs. With the shutters pulled tight against the cold and snow, it’s impossible to tell what time of day it is or even to gauge how long we’ve been awake. I understand now why Caleb is always the first to volunteer to head out into the swirling snow. Too many hours inside this room and I’ll go crazy. Only a few days in, and already it’s hard to imagine passing an entire winter this way. Frostbitten fingers sounds like the lesser of two evils when the other alternative is insanity.
“We should probably get some more wood for the fire,” Ash says, eyeing the dying flames.
“I’ll go,” I say, before anyone else can speak.
“I’ll come with you,” Bishop says.
“You don’t have to, if you want to stay warm,” I tell him.
“No, it’s okay,” he says. “I need the air.” Obviously, I’m not the only one starting to feel the walls closing in.
I pull on my new coat and a pair of boots Ash managed to scavenge for me. She also gave me one of her extra hats and a pair of mittens. Once Bishop and I are bundled up, we head to the front door, but before I can open it someone knocks from the outside, loud and hard against the wood. I freeze, my gaze flying to Bishop and then to Caleb, who’s jolted upright from where he was napping on the couch. People knock on our door almost daily, but this violent pounding speaks of urgency. Or danger.