Chapter 28
MAGGIE
Ilove my bench under the oak in the back paddock. I haven't sat on it since the emus arrived but I'm finally feeling entirely comfortable around them and enjoying a coffee break with Hank next to me.
Hank pushes his nose into my hand and I give him the sugar cube I brought for him, followed by an apple. He always rushes over when I have my coffee; he knows he'll get a treat or two. He takes the apple and crunches into it in a slow, happy rhythm.
The goats are on the opposite side of the paddock. Some are grazing, some playing. Beyoncé is standing on top of an upturned half-barrel that is her personal observation post.
Thelma and Louise are at the far end, facing different directions. Thelma is scanning the horizon and Louise is dozing standing up with her long neck curled. Last week they were still a little wary of me but now I might as well be a tree.
I take a sip of coffee and unlock my phone.
The dating app hasn't improved since I last looked at it. There's a small red number above the icon. Three new matches.
There's Cassidy the dentist, who I unmatched but who has reappeared on the grid because apparently the algorithm believes in second chances.
There's a woman from Hanford — the gateway to nowhere — who has put on her profile that her ideal first date is "a hike and a vulnerable conversation with someone who isn't afraid of big feelings." I read this one out loud.
"What do we think, guys?" I ask the surrounding animals. "Is that a bit too much?"
Beyoncé bleats from her barrel.
"That's what I thought." I swipe left. Next.
There's a woman called Anya whose profile is just one photo of her and her Doberman, with the caption "we're a package deal." Nothing else. The Doberman is wearing a bandana.
"Anya, Anya. Who are you? Tell us about yourself. Are you a kindergarten teacher? A graphic designer? A serial killer? Anything."
Beyoncé bleats again.
"That's also what I thought."
I sigh. Hank has finished the apple and is standing with his eyes closed and his lower lip drooping. I lean in to kiss his nose. "Why is it so hard to find a decent match around here, Hank?"
Hank doesn't reply.
"Never mind. I know the answer." I close the dating app, open my browser, and type Sloane Archer into the search bar.
"Maggie," I mumble to myself. "Don't. You're not one of those tragic people who snoop through other people's socials."
I'm really not. I have a private Instagram account that I haven't used in years and there are only three posts on it. One is a picture of a sunset. One is a picture of Dolly. The third I can't even remember.
But right now, I can't resist. I've been trying really hard not to think about Sloane over the weekend, but she keeps making her way into my head. I think about her saying the chemistry was good. And I think about her saying and I don't want this to be a thing.
Taking another sip of coffee, I scroll through various gossip articles, most of which Mom already showed me.
I've been catching Sloane looking at me. In the henhouse the other day, while she was raking, I felt her eyes on me twice and the second time I knew for sure she was looking. You know when you're being looked at by a person who is trying not to look at you. I've been doing the same myself.
I put the coffee down. "Hank."
He turns to me.
"Do you think Sloane is bicurious?"
Hank shifts his weight from one back leg to the other and lets out a long, philosophical fart.
"Useful."
I lean back and open Sloane's Instagram.
The woman who I thought was going to ruin two months of my life and who I swore would do every miserable job I could invent.
The spoiled socialite who, from the looks of her account, spends her life hopping from one vacation to another in private jets with celebrity friends, drinking champagne on yachts and beaches, attending fashion weeks in cities where the price of a hotel room would feed my animals for a month.
It's not the same woman who turns up on time every morning in clothes borrowed from her housekeeper's daughter.
Who wraps a sapphic romance in a Bible sleeve.
Who tells me my four-dollar shampoo smells nice and is grateful for the use of my washing machine.
Who doesn't complain even when she has every reason to.
I scroll past Sloane in a slip dress at a benefit, lit from below in front of a step-and-repeat.
Sloane on a balcony in Capri with the sea behind her.
Sloane in a bikini on a yacht. Sloane at fashion week, in an architectural black suit, with her hair pulled tight off her face.
She is, objectively, beautiful in all of them.
But she's even more beautiful here. With no makeup and her hair coming out of its tie. With dirt on her hands and a blush on her cheeks. Especially in those hot pants.
No. Don't go there. I'm not the kind of person who develops a sudden and inconvenient — and I won't finish the sentence even in my own head, because that would be admitting something.
I think about Sloane in a pew. There is no way Sloane is in church right now.
She's resourceful enough to have come up with an excuse.
A migraine, an emergency. And then, without any warning, my brain offers me an entirely unhelpful image: Sloane in the pew, but in her hot pants.
I have not had a perverted thought about a real person in years, possibly ever, and certainly not one quite that vivid.
I laugh out loud and Hank cracks his eye open.
"Sorry," I say. "Sorry. I've lost my mind."