Chapter Two
“Love is a behavior, not a feeling.” That’s what Rose’s mother told her when the house was quiet and the sun halfway to rising on the morning Rose left home.
Even at her best, her mother had never been one to dole out the kind of comforting advice you might find in a fortune cookie, so the comment surprised her.
Rose’s thoughts flickered to her own parents’ marriage, one that, as a child, she’d taken in with the same sense of wonder as she did the Grimm’s Fairy Tales by her bedside.
At night, when her parents thought her so deep asleep it wouldn’t matter, music seeped through the floorboards, their laughter bouncing off the metal bed frame, her father’s clunky boots scuffing the tile as he tilted and twirled her mother around the living room.
Their love was larger than life in a way that should have given Rose wings, but forever had been too much to promise: Her father was a knight whose armor had slowly faded along with his memory, her mother a princess who had fallen back into a deep sleep to inure herself against the worst of it, and Rose an unnamed casualty of both enormous losses.
That loss had made it very hard to fall in love.
In high school, in a desperate attempt to find her footing in the landslide that is life with an ailing parent, Rose breezed through boyfriends the way an infant outgrows clothing.
When the time came to lose her virginity, she all but convinced herself that she loved the football player whose pants were a little too big and smile a little too wide.
In the throes of passion, she felt something that she would later describe as a spark that could have grown into love with careful tending and time.
But careful tending was not something she had the capacity for, and with each passing day, she learned that time was not promised.
Rose appraised her mother, sitting so demurely in the leather armchair her father bought to read the newspaper by the fire on cold mornings, and thought about puncturing the film that separated them.
She knew the moment would be lost forever if she didn’t step into it.
A calendar pinned to her wall counted down the days to the start of the semester with bright red X’s, and once she left home, she wasn’t entirely sure she would ever come back.
“Mom?” she said, her voice catching even in the absence of threat.
But when she looked at her mother, she found her eyes vacant, the flicker that had briefly stirred there already gone.
Rose grabbed the keys off the counter and shut the screen door behind her, making sure to let in the biting, early fall air.
The drive from the small town in Massachusetts where she’d grown from child to woman to the small liberal arts college in Vermont she’d developed an unhealthy obsession with as a precocious seven-year-old took no more than three hours all in—and that was including traffic—but Rose found herself wishing it took longer.
Not because she was nervous. Quite the opposite.
Rose felt herself in the most deliciously liminal of spaces, on the precipice of becoming everything she’d ever dreamed.
For years she’d said no to coffees, and parties, and long drives as the world around her shrunk to the size of her dad’s hospital room.
She’d said no so many times, she didn’t blame people she’d once considered her friends for no longer bothering to ask.
But now, she was free. She could say yes.
She would say yes. Her world would be the sprawling campus: the trees, and the sky, and the stone.
She would be surrounded by shiny new people who would push her to change and grow, who would help fill all her heart’s empty spaces with warmth, and assurance, and connection.
So long as Rose had one foot on the gas pedal, nothing could temper her sky-high expectations.
The crowded highway soon merged into a one-lane road that wound in and around towering trees.
A stream flashed through her window as though following her.
She thought about scanning through radio stations until she found something that matched the moment, then rolled down the windows instead.
If she hadn’t been driving, she would have surrendered to the soothing sounds of tires on leaves, the gentle pitter-patter of pine needles on the car’s windshield, and fallen into a deep sleep so she could better dream.
When Rose turned left into the Student Center, she wondered whether she might be able to count the campus her first love.
Even the most battle-worn cynic would be hard pressed not to lose themself, at least briefly, in the beauty of a Vermont fall.
Cradled between the Green Mountains to the east and Adirondacks to the west, the gray stone buildings seemed as much a part of the land as the mountains themselves.
Out her window students already gathered on the quad under towering maples, lounging in Adirondack chairs, wrapped in sweaters and scarves despite the warm weather.
She had always known she would be one of them, someday.
The night she’d snuck into her parents’ closet and put on her father’s worn college sweatshirt for the first time, her mind was made up.
A memory came, unbidden: Rose and her father walking up the steep hill to Mead Chapel, his large, firm hand wrapped around her tiny one.
His voice was soft and soothing, encouraging her without dimming the accomplishment of completing the small hike on her own with a half lie: “It’s only a few more steps, love. I promise.”
Leaves fell like confetti across her windshield, and the bitter taste of self-pity lodged itself so far back in her throat she couldn’t swallow it down.
He should be there, driving the car and carrying lamps and blankets and beaming with pride that she’d done it.
He should be there with her in this place he loved so much.
She was so overcome, she blinked her eyes closed, but so much can happen in the space of a moment.
“Hey!” a woman yelled. Rose panicked and hit the brakes. The woman had been carrying a laundry basket that must have been piled sky high, now on its side. Silk scarves and cashmere sweaters fluttered. “What the hell!”
“Sorry!” Rose yelled, momentarily stunned by the whiplash. “I’m so sorry!” She wasn’t sure what to do, so she put the car in park and leaped out of the driver’s seat.
“What, were you texting or something?” The woman knelt on the asphalt and collected the clothing that was within reach. Rose knelt beside her and ran her fingers along a blue-and-white scarf that felt like it cost more than every item of clothing she’d brought with her combined.
“I don’t really text,” she said, aware this wasn’t the point of the question.
“Weird,” the woman said without meeting her eyes.
“Yeah, I guess.” Rose wiped her hands on the tops of her dark blue Levi’s. “I’m really sorry,” she said again. “Did I hit you?”
“No,” the woman huffed. “But you could have.”
Did and could have were planets away, and for that Rose was grateful.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s this campus.
It was—I mean, I was overwhelmed.” Rose felt she was fumbling the explanation but didn’t think the long version would increase her chances of forgiveness. “It took me by surprise is all.”
At that, the woman softened. “It’s incredible, right?”
“I almost can’t believe it’s real.”
She smiled as though Rose hadn’t almost barreled into her. “My friends are all so jealous. I can’t believe we get to live here for four years.”
Neither could Rose. It was a gift she was not sure she would ever be able to repay—though with every student loan invoice for the next thirty years, she would try. “I’m Rose.” She dropped the last of the sweaters in the basket and held out her hand.
The woman’s eyes went beady. “What’s your last name?”
“Martin.”
She tilted her head back like a caricature of a woman laughing. “Oh my God,” she said. “My roommate just tried to run me over.”
Roommate. “So, you’re—” But she didn’t let Rose finish.
“Penelope West,” she said. “But call me Poppy. Everyone who’s ever tried to run me over does.”
Now that she knew they’d been assigned to each other, Rose looked Poppy over more thoughtfully.
Her tan skin and balayage blond hair radiated health even if one or the other was just an illusion.
Bright eyes shone from a heart-shaped face that would have been just as at home on a movie set as here in this remote academic haven.
If Rose had met her anywhere else, she would have known immediately they belonged to different worlds and would not have wasted time looking any closer.
But this was the point of roommates, she supposed, to meet people you never would have otherwise.
So she did look closer. Poppy’s nails were filed into sharp triangles and painted a vibrant pink.
Her soft blue sweater fell almost to her knees and thick black tights bled into black L.L.Bean boots that somehow looked more chic than rustic.
She had a mole to the left of her thin lips. Rose wondered idly if it was real.
“My mom told me I should get that removed,” Poppy said, having obviously caught Rose staring. “She should be right behind me with the other car, but she’s a terrible driver like you. The most chaotic and distracted woman you will ever meet.”
“My mom didn’t come,” Rose said, a statement she’d uttered more times than she cared to remember, sometimes tempered with a lie and other times hardened with a truth.
Poppy winced. “Well that sucks.”
Rose leaned back on her knees and laughed. “People don’t usually say that part out loud.”
“Yeah, well I’m not ‘people.’ I’m Poppy.” Poppy stood and balanced the laundry basket on her hip. “You should come to dinner with us. It might keep my mom from getting weepy, and it will give us some time to make a game plan.”
“Make a game plan?” Rose repeated blankly.