Chapter 12
MALLORY
The first crate slips in my hands before I make it three steps. Not far. Not enough to spill tomatoes across the pavement in front of half of Juniper Bend. Just enough that my wrists jerk and my stomach gives a warning roll.
"Set that down," Coralee says from beneath the sagging green awning.
"I've got it."
"You had it. Past tense. Dale can get the heavy ones."
Across the narrow market lane, Dale lifts a hand without looking up from unfolding a table that has one leg shorter than the other. "I live to be useful."
Coralee points at a stack of empty buckets.
"Flowers, then."
Flowers I can do.
The morning is damp enough to cling to my hair.
Canvas awnings snap lightly in the breeze, not elegant, not matching, some striped, some patched, one bright yellow one already collecting rainwater in a tired dip over a jam table.
Wooden crates sit everywhere, soil smudged along their sides.
Buckets of flowers wait in cold water at Coralee's feet: zinnias, snapdragons, late roses, Queen Anne's lace, and a few grocery-store bunches still wearing plastic sleeves.
Coffee drifts from a blue trailer two stalls down, bitter and hot.
Nope. Not going to get sick. Not at all.
I take a steadying breath and tie my old apron around my waist.
"Okay," Coralee says, handing a jar of peach preserves to a woman with a baby strapped to her chest. "Flowers are five dollars a bundle, eight if they're fancy. Fancy is at your discretion."
"I'm familiar with fancy," I say, ignoring the knowing look Coralee sends my way.
She turns as three more people step up at once. Someone wants eggs. Someone wants tomatoes. Someone asks whether the zucchini bread has walnuts. The line bends crookedly around the stall because no one seems to understand that waiting should involve order.
I pick up my snips. For the first few stems, I work carefully, getting into a rhythm.
Cut at an angle. Strip the leaves that would sit beneath the water.
Turn the bloom, check the face, set the height.
The first bouquet looks too stiff, too polished.
Like something I would have made for an event where I'd later have to watch my husband's sentences finished by another woman. I take it apart.
"Everything all right?" Coralee asks.
"Yes."
This time I use the ruscus from Coralee's farm instead of the fern wrapped around the store bunches. I let the zinnias lean a little. I tuck basil near the roses and one crooked stem of cosmos near the edge. Not perfect. Personal.
A woman in a denim jacket stops halfway past the stall.
"Oh," she says. Her eyes are on the bouquet in my hand.
I look down at it, suddenly shy in a way I was never when I managed floral walls taller than men. "It's eight."
"I'll take it."
I wrap the stems in brown paper and tie them with twine. My fingers remember the fold, the tuck, and the small firm twist that keeps everything snug without crushing the leaves.
The woman pays, then hesitates. "Could you make another? For my mother. She's been having a hard week."
"What colors does she like?"
The question makes her blink, then she tells me. Yellow, but not too bright. Purple, if it smells nice. Nothing fussy. Her mother hates fussy.
So I make something that doesn't stand up too straight. I use snapdragons, two yellow roses, and the softest purple stock from the cold bucket. I leave room for air between the stems. By the time I hand it over, three people are watching.
"I need one of those," a man says. "For an anniversary. She likes orange, but not, you know, traffic-cone orange."
"I can work with that."
The morning moves. Coins land in Coralee's cash box.
Paper crinkles. Vendors call greetings by name across the lane.
Someone brings me coffee in a paper cup and says, "You're Mallory, right?
" A woman from the soap stall trades a length of pale ribbon for a tiny bouquet of leftover stems. The farmer beside us saves me an empty apple crate, rough and clean enough to turn upside down for display.
Coralee introduces me as Mallory. Not Mrs. Carmichael. Not Rourke's wife. Just Mallory, who makes the flowers.
Near noon, I stand too fast and the market tilts. My hand goes to my stomach before I can stop it. Coralee notices.
"Sit," she says quietly.
"I'm fine."
"That wasn't an invitation."
I sit behind the stall on an overturned crate with crackers in my apron pocket and water between my knees.
At the end of the market, Coralee presses folded bills into my palm.
"My share is too much," I say.
"It's your share."
"It's flowers from your stall."
"They look better once you've handled them."
The money is small, ridiculously small compared to the world I left.
Rourke once spent more on a bottle of wine without asking the price.
But these bills are warm from my palm. They smell faintly of basil, peaches, and paper.
No one handed them to me because I wore his name.
They exist because I made something and someone wanted to carry it home. I close my fist around them.
At the county clinic, the form asks for the father's name. I write Rourke Carmichael. The letters look formal, like a signature on a contract.
Relationship status. Emergency contact. Father's phone number. I leave what I can blank.
Around me, women sit with partners, mothers, toddlers, and tote bags full of snacks. A man in work boots rubs slow circles on a woman's back while she leans forward with both elbows on her knees. A grandmother knits something pale green. Someone laughs softly at a phone video.
The chair beside me stays empty. I keep my hands folded over my purse so I won't touch my stomach again in front of strangers.
The clinician is kind without making me feel awkward about it. Her name is Andrea. She has gray threaded through her braid and hands that are warm when she adjusts the paper sheet over my waist.
"There we are," she says after a minute.
A rapid sound fills the small room. At first, I don't understand it. It's too fast, too insistent, a tiny gallop.
"That's the heartbeat," Andrea says.
My throat closes. The ceiling has a water stain shaped like Michigan. I stare at it while that sound keeps going, stubborn and alive. A life.
My hand moves low on my stomach. Andrea gives me a moment. Maybe she gives all women a moment. Maybe she knows when someone has come alone and the chair beside her isn't simply empty.
"Would you like a printout?"
"Yes," I say.
She asks if I want to record the sound. I think of Rourke's face if he heard it.
The stillness that would come over him. The way his eyes would find mine, shocked open and unguarded.
I think of handing him the phone and watching him understand that he's going to be a father.
Then I think of what that knowledge would do.
Rourke can move mountains when he decides something belongs to him.
I'm only just learning how not to be moved.
"No," I say. "Just the picture."
Coralee has tea waiting when I get back.
"How far along?" she asks. I've sensed that she figured me out days ago. Perhaps it's a maternal thing. Or maybe it's just a Coralee thing.
The gentleness of it nearly undoes me. I sit down. "Not far enough to show much. Far enough that I can't pretend it isn't happening."
She pushes a plate of toast toward me. "Does he know?"
"No."
"Do you want to tell me about him?"
I look through the window. Beyond the glass, market crates are stacked near Coralee's porch, flowers drooping in leftover buckets, the day not cleaned up yet.
"I'm married," I say. Coralee's face doesn't change.
"I still love him." The words hurt more out loud.
"There was another woman. I don't know if he slept with her.
He says nothing happened, but he hid an overnight stay with her.
There was a photograph. A watch she gave him, engraved like she had a right to that part of him. "
Coralee folds her hands around her mug.
"I left before I told him about the baby."
"What do you believe happened?"
That question is worse than judgment.
"I don't know." I press my thumb against a nick in the table.
"That's the part I can't get past. I don't know if he wanted her.
I don't know if he liked being seen with someone who fit his world better.
I don't know if he was only careless or if he let her close because some part of him wanted the attention. "
"And what do you actually know?"
I swallow. "He let her close enough that all of those things felt possible."
Coralee nods once.
"Part of me thinks she won," I say. "She had his time, his secrets, and his attention. I had his name and a home he assumed I'd stay in."
"Has he called?"
"Every day."
"And?"
"And every time I ignore him, I feel like part of me is dying. You can love him and still not trust him."
My eyes burn.
"You can miss him and need distance," she says. "You can tell him about this baby when you're ready without letting the baby decide whether you go back."
"I can't keep it from him forever."
"No. But forever isn't today."
Outside, Dale calls for one of the kids. A bucket knocks over. Water spills across the porch boards and flashes in the sun.
Coralee glances toward the sound, then back at me. "Build enough under your feet that fear isn't the thing choosing for you."
I look past her, toward the farmhouse roof visible over the field, the garden beds I've barely started clearing, the stacked crates waiting to be returned next Saturday. For the first time, it doesn't look like a hiding place.
At home, I empty my apron pockets at the kitchen table: folded bills, loose change, a length of ribbon, one fallen zinnia head, crackers gone soft in their sleeve, the appointment card, and the ultrasound printout.
I study the grainy image until my eyes ache. Without Andrea's finger pointing, I wouldn't know where to look. A blur inside a blur. A tiny shape hidden in gray shadows. I slide the printout into the apron pocket.
My phone rings. Rourke's name fills the screen.
For one breath, I imagine answering. I imagine saying nothing at first, just letting him hear me breathe. I imagine telling him there was a heartbeat today. I imagine the sound of him breaking open on the other end of the line.
My thumb hovers. The call ends.
I hang the apron on the hook beside the kitchen door, visible in the late light. Then I take the printout back out and carry it to the bedroom, where the little bed waits beneath its plain quilt and no one can see me fold. I press the picture between both hands and cry until my ribs hurt.
When I'm done, I return it carefully to the apron pocket. For now, I keep both things close. The baby and the self I'm trying to grow back.