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really, what this client is about to be accused of.” Bernadette often gets angry on behalf of her clients, and they love her
for it. That’s why they hire her, for her passion and her fire. But she does not typically employ the passive voice with such
recklessness. Something, Jordan can tell, is going on.
“If it’s a VIP, why aren’t you handling it?”
“Conflict of interest. And you know this client, so you can put the toxic thing to rest. Any statements would be more realistic
coming from you.”
“I do? They would?” Jordan combs the recesses of her mind, wondering who she has a better relationship with than Bernadette
does. Bernadette’s contacts are legendary; she’s mystified. “Okay, who is it?”
The waves don’t really crash into a crescendo at exactly that point, the Earth doesn’t tilt, but it feels to Jordan like both of these things happen as her boss says, “The client is me. I’m the client.”
Caspian is standing in the portable crib, banging his hands on the side, and saying, “Up!”
Natalie’s eyes pop open and she glances at the clock. It’s six thirty. “Shhh.” Natalie tips her head toward Evangeline, who
is sleeping.
Subtlety is not Caspian’s specialty. He says, “UP!” even louder. Then: “Milk.”
“Okay,” whispers Natalie, a finger to her lips. “Okay, shhh.”
A peek into Mae’s room reveals that Mae and Leo are already up and out. Scarlett is alone in Jordan’s bed, sleeping deeply.
Calvin’s door is still shut, which means Cinnamon is not yet up. She changes Caspian’s diaper, then tiptoes down the stairs
with him, as usual, on her hip.
She puts Caspian in his portable booster and as soon as she pours Cheerios onto the tray he begins shoveling them into his
mouth. She hands him his sippy cup, which he immediately turns upside down to see how many drops of the precious Hillside
Haven organic milk he can get onto his tray. (Natalie has brought two bottles with her, but she knows they won’t last all
week. Her children are voracious milk drinkers. As they should be. She’ll have to buy milk from the store. She hasn’t bought
milk in a store in years!)
Natalie makes coffee in the ancient Hamilton Beach and sits at the island, staring at her phone, while the coffeemaker gurgles
and hisses. She’s not sure who she’s most angry with—Austin for saying what he said, her father for putting the house on the
market, Jordan for going along with it, or herself for drinking too many Dixie Cups of wine. Her stomach churns.
“Oh. Casp,” she says, crouching down next to him. She runs her hand along his cowlick—appropriately named, considering where they live. “What are we going to do?”
He offers her a damp Cheerio and she accepts it. “Eat,” he instructs, so she pops it in her mouth. She’s eaten worse. Her
quads complain so she rises, regains her seat at the island, and looks around the kitchen she knows so well, thinking about
how she got here.
“You’re a boyfriend person,” someone once said to Natalie in high school.
Sure, okay, maybe. Yes, she had had a series of boyfriends since ninth grade, well, eighth grade if you’re really counting,
but did this technically make her a “boyfriend person”? Was that a good thing or a bad thing? She was captain of the speech
and debate team, and she played middling basketball and decent soccer. She was the center of a loyal and popular friend group.
But was “boyfriend person” her identity?
Partly to prove this person wrong she broke up with her last high school boyfriend the summer after graduation, and she entered
Wesleyan resolutely single, remaining so for most of her college years, with a constellation of short-term relationships or
non-relationships under her belt, and the best group of friends in the world. The Sisterhood.
After graduation the six members of the Sisterhood—a tight little knot, as beautiful and complex as a Celtic design—scattered:
one to Washington to work on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign; one to law school; one to a marketing job in Manhattan;
one to toil away in a gene-sequencing lab at Massachusetts General Hospital; one to Montana to work for the state’s Department
of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, where she got to wear a wide-brimmed hat and process applications for hunting mountain lions.
Natalie spent one summer at home while she conducted a job search.
She had a double major in psychology and Gender and Sexuality, with a minor in data analysis.
By August, she’d gotten an offer to become a data scientist at a wearable-tech start-up in Boston.
Yes, please! With her new salary, she could afford a tiny one-bedroom on Commonwealth Avenue, a passable work wardrobe, and just enough going-out outfits.
The brand was so new, she had equity. If they went public, she’d make actual money.
She had two friends from college in the Back Bay, and it wasn’t long before she met the friends of those friends and even the friends of friends of friends.
She lived like Carrie Bradshaw, if the late nineties were 2015, Cosmos were Negronis, and words were numbers.
After two years, she was promoted to head of analytics.
She had her eye on going higher—she had her eye on, one day, the CTO role.
The Sisterhood got together when they could, which wasn’t often. Everyone was busy, so it was more likely that two or three
of them would see each other, sending photos to the others via the group chat. During Natalie’s third summer in Boston, Chloe
called to invite her to Montana. At a house party thrown by one of Chloe’s colleagues she met Austin. He was from the south
of the state, near Bozeman, but he was visiting friends up in Bigfork. That night, after they’d talked for ninety minutes
straight sitting at the outdoor firepit, he told Natalie she had the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen.
“And you fell for the line about the eyes?” said Jordan on the phone. “That’s so corny.”
“I do have nice eyes,” said Natalie. “We all do.”
“But you fell for it! Wasn’t it dark by the firepit?”
“I wouldn’t say I fell for it,” said Natalie. “But I definitely fell.” Austin himself had giant brown eyes with a rim of hazel around them. He had a
degree from the College of Agriculture at Montana State and ropy forearms. He was about as different from Wesleyan guys as
he could be. The first night she could tell that his humor was a little goofy, his faith was strong, and his heart was massive.
She wanted to crawl inside his plaid flannel and stay for a week.
Austin invited her on a hike the very next day.
They saw elk and bison. They jumped into Flathead Lake holding hands and screamed when they came out of the cold water.
The day after that, he drove her to the airport for her flight home, went to the ticket counter while she checked in, and bought her a ticket to come to Bozeman in three weeks and meet his family on their dairy farm.
It was the sexiest thing she’d ever had anyone do for her.
“His family?” said Jordan. “Already? On a dairy farm?”
“One hundred and ten head of Holsteins,” said Natalie. She followed this statistic up with a bombshell of a statement: “I’m
pretty sure this is the man I’m going to marry.”
Three weeks had never passed so slowly. Natalie had fallen so hard. She’d never quite bought into the phrase “crazy in love” in the past, but now she did. Sex with Austin was better, different,
somehow more profound, than it had been with anyone else, but it wasn’t just that. I want to have his babies, she thought
the third time they slept together. You weren’t supposed to think that way, not when you came from a liberal family in Massachusetts
and held a degree from Wesleyan. The Sisterhood might laugh her out of the group chat.
Soon enough, Natalie and Austin were on a speeding train they couldn’t get off—didn’t want to get off. They started planning
the future on Natalie’s trip to Bozeman. Natalie couldn’t give up her job, not with the equity, the promise of mobility. Austin
had lived in Montana his whole life. For Natalie, he was willing to make a change.
In Boston, Austin got a job in medical sales. He was so good! He had the personality for sales—he could talk to a dying houseplant
and it would perk up like it had just been watered—but he didn’t have the true temperament. Without putting too fine a point
on it, he hated it.
“It’ll get better!” said Natalie optimistically.
“Sure.”
“It’s just an adjustment.”
In the next two years: proposal, bridal shower, wedding, two lines on the pregnancy stick that meant Evangeline was coming.
A bigger apartment, double the rent. A coveted spot in a Back Bay day care. Little Evangeline, with her tiny pursed lips and
her little waving fists, her milky eyes, her demands. Natalie’s heart had never felt so big.
They loved their little family, but at work Austin was miserable. Tiny Evangeline was miserable too, constantly shuttled from
here to there. Natalie wasn’t miserable, but she was exhausted. They were tied to the drudgery of day care drop-off; the stress
of one or the other of them always having to say no to staying late at work, to drinks with investors for Natalie, clients
for Austin. They were stretched so thin. The winter sidewalks were so icy.
“All of this time inside is making my elbows itch,” Austin told Natalie. “I’m allergic to the fluorescent lighting in conference
rooms.”
“I don’t think that’s something you can be allergic to.”
“The sky is so small here. It’s all hidden by the trees.”
“Well, I can’t change the size of the sky,” Natalie said testily, scooping pureed carrots into six-month-old Evangeline’s mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her
head, willing herself to some equilibrium. “Do you want to quit?” She felt for him—she really did. She’d taken him out of
his natural habitat, away from the wide Montana sky, and plonked him in the middle of asphalt and bricks. Of course he didn’t
fit here. Did she even fit here?